#bbc Dracula spoilers

[astrangergivingthestrangewelcome]

Spoilers for BBC Dracula but... my biggest complaint about how Mofftiss adapts Jonathan is really his ending. Those two can never stick a landing with me. Jonathan Harker does die which isn't the problem exactly.

After torturing him for the two months, Dracula tells Jonathan he will spare him if he promises to do nothing as Dracula kills who he likes in England. Jonathan, who is utterly wasted away and dying makes this big painstaking effort to crawl up Dracula so he can look him in the eye to tell him that if he spares him he will do everything possible to stop him, and Dracula chuckles and snaps his neck for Jonathan to rise again as a undead vampire-y kinda Revenant thing who then hurls himself off the castle walls. I thought it was a pretty good scene I was very proud of my boy and thought it was very in character.

BUT THEN cut to later, Dracula is at the nunnery. Undead Revenant Jonathan is all tortured and traumatized and wants to die so Dracula offers to kill him again in exchange for being invited in, and they do that. Mofftiss did what they always fucking do which is take one step into a good decision and a hard left into terrible choices. Like. You had everything set up for Revenant Jonathan, alive from sheer force of spite, out to kill Dracula (which I am so incredibly into by the way) and instead you kill him off and you make his last act on the show condemning a whole nunnery to the same gruesome death he was forced to endure. Like what happened to "I'll do everything in my power to stop you?" I hate it here why do they trick me into thinking they understand the characters they write about

#dracula #bbc dracula #bbc dracula spoilers #jonathan harker

[serial-serializednovelreader]

I think that adaptations who leave Quincey out or make him a horrible person (see 2020 Dracula) miss the point. He's not just a comic relief. he's the oathmaker. He swears to Lucy when she rejects him he'll always be her friend, and he follows through. He swears to Mina he'll not rest until SHE rests, and he follows through. He swears he will kill Dracula to Jonathan, and they shake hands, and he follows through. He gives Dracula one of the two fatal bows, and bleeds and dies, like he swore he would, for those he loves.

Wow, Anon. That was beautiful. You came to my inbox, absolutely destroyed me, and I'm thanking you for it. /pos

You're so right, though. He is the oathmaker, he follows through on his promises no matter what. Also, the Oathmaker is such a cool title is that a thing I missed?? Can that be what we call him forever now if we don't already??

But here I am, doing the exact same thing as the producers/directors, writing him off as comic relief (I did a little more than that, but still)!! I am truly sorry to Quincey, he is not just that and he never was. So thank you, Anon, for reminding me again why I love him so much. Perhaps one day, there will be an adaptation where he's actually appreciated.

As a side note, they made him a horrible person in 2020 Dracula?! Ugh, I started watching it and could not get through it after they killed Jonathan off -- I didn't care if they resurrected him or what, I was done. I just couldn't keep watching Now I don't want to do it even more if they ruined Quincey too!!!! BBC stop trying to be edgy with classic literature challenge (impossible). What are they going to do next? Make a Jane Eyre series where Jane's the wife in the attic the whole time? I shouldn't even write that cause they'll probably think "wow, that's a great idea!" :/

#sorry for the mini rant #thank you again anon! #dracula spoilers #spoilers #anon ask #dracula daily #bram stocker's dracula #dracula #quincey morris #quincy #dracula posting #bbc dracula #i guess i could try watching bbc dracula but i realllyyyy don't want to

[butternuggets-blog]

My take on modernising Dracula:

Jonathan arrives in Transylvania knowing the language as well as any other tourist, but when everyone starts trying to tell him that Dracula's a monster he thinks they have a problem with him because he's a capitalist.

The voyage on the Demeter takes place on a cargo ship instead of a sailing ship. The crew wise up towards the end that they have a vampire in their midst and actually try to fight back, but are unsuccessful.

Lucy is a charity worker and child psychologist who is in a deeply committed polyamorous relationship with Quincey Morris, Dr John Seward, and Arthur Holmwood. Since she's only allowed to marry one of her boyfriends, she decides to go with Arthur, since the wealth he will inherit from his father will allow them all to live comfortably together.

Professor Van Helsing is a semi-retired expert in rare diseases, both physical and psychological, who has moved from a medical position to an academic teaching role. He was one of Steward's mentors while he was completing his degree, and the two became quite close. He discovered that vampires exist after witnessing the results of an attack and a turning, and left the medical profession for the academic field shortly after because it gave him the freedom to move around and hunt vampires.

Jonathan and Mina get married in the hospital in Budapest where he is recuperating after his escape from Dracula.

The final confrontation with Dracula goes down exactly like it does in the book, except the villagers help mount an attack against the brides in the castle with Van Helsing, allowing Mina to stay with the others. Quincey still gets shot, but John stays with him and manages to patch up the wound enough that when Van Helsing arrives he can stabilise the wound with surgery.

Jonathan slashes Dracula's throat and Mina stabs him through the heart.

Additional:

- The castle and village are isolated from the modern world by nature and also by a lack of wifi. There's no phone signals up here either. It's a deliberate attempt by Dracula to keep the common local knowledge that he's a vampire local knowledge. If the villagers can easily get outside help, his ass is grass.

- Lucy uses her knowledge of the welfare system in London to target vulnerable children who are being neglected by the system and won't be missed by their carers.

#dracula #modern dracula #dracula daily #bbc dracula #jonathan harker #mina murray #lucy westenra #quincey morris #abraham van helsing #john seward #arthur holmwood #dracula spoilers

[imlisteningg]

spoilers for ep16 of Taz vs Dracula

i am so deep in bbc merlin that hearing motherfucking king arthur at the end actually transcended me to another plane of existence

I LOVE when fandoms align like this it's like they made it just for me < 3 thank u mcelroys

#taz vs dracula spoilers #taz spoilers #bbc merlin #i out loud said MY SON #i mean obviously this guy is not going to be Bradley James King Arthur #but ill take any lore #lap it up like a dehydrated dog #delicious

[draculasmyth]

About The Dark Compass and taking place in 2020 a.k.a. the year the series was aired. 

Bram’s Stoker’s Dracula was published in 1897 and it was mostly written in the 1890s. The story takes place in 1897. Jonathan Harker visits Dracula’s castle in 1897. The story is contemporary to its writing time. 

There are so many literary and academic articles written about Stoker’s Dracula and its major themes that we can safely say it could be used as a social commentary and/or criticism of the Victorian era. 

Social disparity between classes, between men and women, between rich and poor.  

“Dracula presents a series of contrasts and clashes between old traditions and new ideas. Stoker uses the figure of the vampire as thinly-veiled shorthand for many of the fears that haunted the Victorian fin de siècle.”

Dracula’s forays into London, for example, and his ability to move unnoticed through the crowded streets while carrying the potential to afflict all in his path with the stain of vampirism, play upon late-Victorian fears of untrammelled immigration.

A number of scholars have indicated that Dracula's version of the vampire myth participates in antisemitic stereotyping.

The Jack the Ripper murders had created a storm of hysteria in the press with the local Jewish community bearing the brunt of the outbursts. The secretive nature of the Jewish ghetto was also cited as a reason why the murders were never solved, with the Jews seen as having closed ranks around one of their own number who had committed the crimes. Such fears, which Dracula mirrors very closely, ultimately lay behind the introduction of The Aliens Act of 1905, which was put in place largely to stem immigration from Eastern Europe.

The act of vampirism itself, with its idea of tainted blood, suggests the fear of sexually transmitted diseases such as syphilis.

Victorian literature tends to present the vampire myth as a sexual allegory in which English female virtue is menaced by foreign predators. Sexuality and seduction is a major theme especially as it relates to the corruption of English womanhood. The Count’s attentions focused in particular on Mina, a woman who selflessly spends her honeymoon nursing her sick husband in a convent, and the beautiful Lucy Westenra, who is, by contrast, dangerously modern in her ways.

Sexual depravity and aggression were understood by the Victorians as the exclusive domain of Victorian men, while women were expected to submit to their husband's sexual wishes. Harker's desire to submit to Dracula’s brides, and the scene's origin as a dream Stoker had, highlights the divide between societal expectations and lived realities of men who wanted more freedom in their sexual lives.

Bram Stoker includes numerous references to the very latest ideas and inventions in his novel;  a phonograph used by Dr. Seward to keep his diary was a new and expensive piece od technology in 1897, Kodak cameras, telegrams sent across Europe, blood tranfusions, portable typerwiters refect the technological changes in the late Victorian era. [1]

There are many themes to derive from Stoker’s Dracula and apply them to Victorian society, but in the end Gatiss & Mofatt’s Dracula was made in 2020. 

I’ll be honest and admit that the rapid change in cinematography was a bit jarring in first viewing but the more times I watch The Dark Compass the more i like it. 

For exactly it is what Dracula has been in 1897; a social commentary, and it’s done in a way alluring and witty, IMHO. Cameras, helicopters, instagram, smartphones, skype interact with mercinaries, illegal funding, corruption veiled under noble actions. 

This Count Dracula is closer to Vlad Tepes, a warlord, a Prince, Wallachia’s ruler, diplomat, prisoner, manipulator, intelligent, adapting. Does the end humanises in a way the original novel never did? Quite possibly. But how could it go differently in 2020 if we consider everything we wrote about the Other, the different race? 

What’s to criticise in 2020? Conspiracy theories? Smartphones and Instagram? Beauty? Mental illness? Cancer? How is any of these everyday issues treated in the series that don’t ring right in our ears? Lucy loves her beauty, flirts with Death but wants to keep her beauty and live forever? Why would that attract Dracula? This incarnation of Dracula? Zoe/Agatha explains it in the end, but Dracula explained it before. 

“I shall look for the perfect food of this world.”

One of my favourite scenes is Dracula’s dialogue with Zoe about rights. She assumes, quite rightly, that feminism is not something he’s aware of. Rights, she says and she catches his attention. 

Rights. 

“Nobody has rights, Zoe. Man, woman or monster. No-one, nowhere. It's just a lunatic fantasy.”

And it continues with the greatest way I have witnessed of taking the noblest of ideas and twisting it to fit the “monster”.

“What's against the law is you locking him up. I think you might have forgotten,Dr Helsing... 

Count Dracula has rights.”

And I simply love Frank Renfield. 

Just as much as I love the Dark Compass, which in my opinion, is a great tribute to the original, altered to fit our times. 

#Dracula #BBC Dracula #The Dark Compass #personal opinion #spoilers #obviously #1.03

[theriu]

I know it’s likely because of the nearing Spooky Day, but I still feel suspicious that this article writer might be a secret Dracula Daily reader. THE TIMING IS JUST TOO GOOD! Anyhoo here’s a great rundown of which Dracula adaptation is the most accurate! Apparently it’s the only one that includes our favorite early scene, “Jonathan Witnesses His Host Climb The Wall Like A Lizard,” as well as other oft-omitted scenes and themes. A very enjoyable read!

(PLEASE NOTE: Theres a slight spoiler in here for something that hasn’t happened in Dracula Daily yet!)

#Dracula daily #Dracula #bbc #miniseries #if I liked horror at all I might watch it #But the humor and levity we enjoy through tumblr memes would be absent #So this is the only way I can really enjoy the book #But I hope others will find this helpful! #Or at least enjoy reading the article as I did!

[cascadiums]

I promise you the eroticism in Dracula adaptations is not always a bad thing. some creators are bad at using it effectively and some I'm sure are just creeps, but it isn't automatically gratuitous or fetishising. there is grounds for it in the novel and a sexless adaptation avoids some really interesting elements.

the way vampires feed is intimate, which is part of what makes it so frightening; when Jonathan encounters the Brides, the fact that he's attracted to them is distressing (the fact that they're women being sexually assertive at all would be disturbing in a Victorian setting). there is also an association between blood and sex in Victorian culture that heightens the whole thing. the predator is sexy and that is bad news for the prey. the Count's transition from ancient hairy-handed bastard to rejuvenated enthralling bastard correlates with his growing power. and, avoiding spoilers, he isn't the only character to become more dangerous as their sexuality is hightened.

for Stoker, the explicitly erotic tends to signpost evil. it's corruption and temptation and everything else you would expect of a monster that is combatted with Christian iconography. if you watch a version of Dracula and find yourself thinking "this is a really fucked up power dynamic to eroticise" then that tracks pretty well with the novel.

but adaptations are responses to a text, right? they're a dialogue between two distinct moments through the way a narrative is re-told. the adaptation comments on its own context and on that of the source material.

so what does that mean in a version of Dracula where the relationship between the vampire and victim is sexualised and even romanticised? it could be that it's removing a perceived layer of victorian restraint and shame from desire, or trying to translate how risque the novel was for a contemporary audience when the goalposts for scandal have been moved. it could be that, in that moment, it was an effective way to give Lucy more agency and control, giving her character the freedom to want. it could be an attempt to reframe the story in a more sex-positive context where attraction = evil doesn't make as much sense. or maybe it's just a schlocky monster movie that favours anything shocking.

like I say, it's not always done effectively, and I understand the aversion. Dracula covers a hell of a lot of themes, and it's a shame that only sexuality ever seems to pull focus in re-tellings, but the Dracula-Makes-Everyone-Swoon versions are still a worthwhile part of the conversation. personally, I don't like the Coppola version for the way it handles the theme, and I never managed to get through the 2020 BBC version because "did you have sexual intercourse with Count Dracula" sent me into hysterics. the Hammer Dracula series, however, is deeply silly, campy and full of sex, and I honestly love it.

#dracula daily #adaptations #an alternate theory is that a bunch of women saw Bela Lugosi in the 1920s play prior to the universal film and thought 'oh damn' #and things proliferated from there

[the-doctor-3000]

Do you take requests? Are there any rules?

Hello! Yes, I do take requests.

Rules:

I'll write;

Genres - Fluff, Angst, Crossover, Time Travel AU, Songfic, Isekai, Hurt/comfort, Character x Reader, HCs, One-shots, maybe a Mini Series, possibly Character x Oc, Character x Reader x Character, Love Triangles, Slow Burn

Fandoms I currently write for -

The Legend of Vox Machina

Once Upon A Time

The Witcher (game, series & books)

Avatar: The Last Airbender

Steven Universe

Star Vs. The Forces of Evil

Shadowhunters (series, movie & books - I just finished the 2nd book so please no spoilers)

Black Butler (manga)

My Hero Academia

Spy × Family

Jujutsu Kaisen

Folk of the air

Pirates of the Caribbean

Thundercats (2011 bcs I haven't seen the 80s version yet)

Moriarty The Patriot

Gargoyles

Bungou Stray Dogs

Ninjago

LMK

Bram Stoker's Dracula (1992)

Sherlock BBC

Doctor Who

X-Men

Demon Slayer

TMNT (2003 and 2012 versions)

Gravity Falls

Castlevania

Stranger Things

Jurassic Park

Independence Day

Tim Burton movies

The Arcana

Inside Job

Blood of Zeus

Mia & Me

Maya and the Three

Beauty and the Beast

Transformers (Bay)

Spider-Man: Into The Spider-Verse + Across the Spider-Verse

Avengers

Good Omens

Howl's Moving Castle

Van Helsing 2004

Tales of Arcadia

I won't write; NSFW/Lemon/Smut (It'll only be implied), Incest, Character x Character, Pedophilia

#anon ask

[unabridgedisbetter]

Y’all, since I have NO impulse control and I was very worried about spoilers, (don’t worry friends no spoilers from me) I went ahead and finished Dracula the book during this dry, no email period. And when even THAT wasn’t enough I decided to start watching a bunch of “Dracula” movies. So here are my noodle thoughts

The first one I tried was the 1992 Dracula with Winona Rider and Keanu Reeves. I have a whole other post explaining the intense emotions related to that movie but the three biggest opinions is that 1) it is VERY inaccurate to the book all the while acting like it is Very Faithful 2) younger Dracula looks like a goth Willy wonka 3) it was so wildly horny I couldn’t finish it. (I wish we had an alternative reality movie with the same cast that was a good book to movie adaption) Over all the disappointment was so strong that I was wary of trying any other movies

Momma didn’t raise no quitter tho so my husband convinced me to try the 1931 hour long Dracula and this ALSO was NOT LIKE the book but I forgave them for a lot after the drama of the last movie. Honestly for me the best part was Renfield. the actor was old timey attractive, quoted book renfield, and was in general a Mad Lad. I’m sure there are some spoilers to the book because this one covered Main Plot Points but everything is glossed over because it’s only an hour long. Also the actress for Mina was adorable and any vampire violence couldn’t be shown on screen because of the time period, Which I found to be rather charming. That being said their biggest sin was reducing my boi Jonathan to a literal SIDE CHARACTER. He wasn’t even a Lawyer 😭.

I watched Van Helsing the other night, and Hugh Jackman was The Best Part as a vampire hunting goth cowboy. At this point I had given up all hope of any movie being like the book which is good because this was DEFINITIVELY the REMIX. Over all I enjoyed the film (I want to know what shampoo Van Helsing uses because his hair was very luxurious) but it was SOOO not accurate to the book that anyone could watch it and still not have a clue as to what actually transpired in Bram Stokers telling.

It is rather odd to me that Dracula has inspired SO MANY MOVIES and yet as far as I can tell no one has sat down to create an accurate movie (or mini series). On one side the variety of movies is fun (I’ve seen Dracula untold and like it, though again it’s a very different retelling of Dracula) but on the other hand would it kill the directors to leave Van Helsing a middle aged man, have all three suitors, make Jonathan an ACTUAL MAIN CHARACTER, quote the book dialogue for more people then Renfield and let the horror slowly creep over everyone instead of investing in jump scares and crazy theatrics? Basically I want the people who made the six hour BBC Pride and Prejudice (that was faithful to the source material) to make a six hour Dracula (equally faithful to the source material 😂. )If anyone knows of a more or less faithful Dracula movie please let me know.

#dracula daily #daily dracula #van helsing #dracula movie #1992 bram stokers dracula #dracula 1931 #hugh jackman #young keanu #jane austen #shitpost #our good friend jonathan #jonathan harker #mina harker #pride and predujice

[devoursjohnlock]

Riddles of the Sphinx

There are a few things in BBC Dracula that I just can’t seem to let go of, and this is one. I’ve tried to write this meta a few times, and never found a particularly satisfying “solution” to it, but I think now it’s time to present it.

In the final episode of BBC Dracula (The Dark Compass), Mark Gatiss plays “Frank”, a modern-day version of Bram Stoker’s Renfield, who eats insects and is enthralled to Count Dracula. The extent to which Frank’s mind has been overtaken by Dracula is demonstrated by his... unique... solution to a cryptic crossword. Like Jonathan Harker’s journal in the first episode (The Rules of the Beast), Frank thinks he is writing rational, intelligible text in his crossword, but it all comes out in Dracula, with a single phrase spilling out over the grid.

“Dracula will be served” | “Dracula is my Lord”

Spoilers under the cut for the Inside No.9 episode The Riddle of the Sphinx, which is among the best episodes of that series (though should probably come with a few trigger warnings); if you’ve been planning to watch it, please do so before reading further.

The crossword Mark is solving in The Dark Compass was set by someone named “Sphinx”, and this is why I find it interesting. Sphinx is a pseudonym for Mark’s longtime League of Gentlemen collaborator Steve Pemberton. This isn’t the first crossword that Pemberton has written; in fact, his first (co-written with cryptic expert Alan Connor) was the central theme of an episode of Inside No.9, which is co-written by and co-stars Pemberton and another League of Gentlemen alum, Reece Shearsmith. For those who are unfamiliar, Inside No.9 is an anthology series, with half-hour episodes that are usually a mixture of horror and comedy.

The Riddle of the Sphinx is about a Cambridge professor who writes cryptic crosswords for the student newspaper; one night, a young woman breaks into his rooms, demanding that he teach her how to solve his puzzles. Together, they work their way through his latest creation, which was quietly published in the real-life Guardian newspaper on the day the episode aired in February 2017.

In the first scene of the episode, Sphinx brandishes a weapon at the intruder, a prop gun from a student performance of Anton Chekhov’s The Seagull. The gun is then safely stowed away until the end of the episode, when we’re told explicitly that Chekhov’s gun cannot simply remain in the drawer:

TYLER: Never show a gun in Act One if you’re not going to fire it in Act Five.

I do hate to have a joke explained, but never fear, they gave us an unexplained joke, too. The intruder goes by the name Nina. When we meet her, Nina appears not to understand the workings of the cryptic crossword, but soon we learn that she’s actually an expert. Not enough of an expert, however, to have noticed a hidden clue in the crossword that could have saved her life.

I  S W A P P E D  C U P S

The unexplained joke is that in a cryptic crossword, a hidden clue of this sort is called a “Nina”.

Sphinx takes his own pseudonym from the same mythic figure that gives the sphinx cat (like Sekhmet, who was blamed for murder in Sherlock’s The Great Game) its name. The riddle of the sphinx is well known to everyone: What walks on four legs in the morning, two legs in the afternoon, and three legs in the evening? The three stages of the riddle describe the ageing process, such that the answer is “a man”. According to the myth, the sphinx asphyxiated and consumed anyone who could not answer the riddle correctly; when finally the riddle was answered by Oedipus, the sphinx destroyed itself. Most of these beats are also hit in this Inside No.9 episode.

So, as you can see, The Riddle of the Sphinx is all rather meta; as his first lesson for Nina, Sphinx creates a hypothetical 7-word clue that is meant to be solved as “ARCHITECTURE”...

... but which is actually a half decent summary of the night’s events. This, in itself, is fitting, because a cryptic crossword clue is typically composed of two parts: the definition of the word, plus a bit of wordplay to help you solve it. Ordinary crosswords trade in relatively straightforward definitions; the cryptic crossword requires creativity, it requires looking at the clues from different angles, and I would say it also requires a sense of humour.

So, to hammer that metaphor home: Nina is asking Sphinx to teach her how to read his subtext, so that she can win the game.

Steve Pemberton has published a few other cryptic crosswords as Sphinx since The Riddle of the Sphinx aired, one in January 2018, when the subsequent series of Inside No.9 aired, and one in August 2020, which was solved on the YT series Cracking the Cryptic, if you’d like to see how an expert tackled it.

Like the crossword in The Riddle of the Sphinx, the Dracula crossword was also published in the Guardian on the day that The Dark Compass aired, in January 2020. And while the solution Mark’s character “Frank” offers is Dracula-focused but, well, insane, the actual solution to the crossword is a bloody, vampiric thing in its own right, as shown in these highlighted examples in the solved crossword below.

You may notice that I’m trying to be conservative here; I might also have included “DOOM”, “NOVEL”, “PSYCHIATRIST”, and perhaps a few others (”IBEX” is particularly tempting, for its devil horns) as Dracula-related. There are also a few treats among the clues, including:

20A Mountain dweller to be found in 9 (4)

...which has a clue “inside no. 9″ (9 = IX, and “BE” is found within it), such that there’s an Inside No.9 reference in each episode of Dracula, which is pleasing.

So, when I first heard that the Dracula crossword was set by Sphinx, what I wanted from it was a Nina... the potentially life-saving clue, hidden in plain sight. I haven’t been able to find one in it; in fact, I don’t think any of Sphinx’s cryptic crosswords since the original have included Ninas, which strikes me as odd, given their prominence in Riddle of the Sphinx (in the end, there were two in that crossword alone) and the value of hidden clues in Moffat and Gatiss’s work.

And for that reason, I might not have written up this meta if it weren’t for @victorianpining​‘s reading of BBC Dracula, which casts Dracula as a stand-in for the writers. In this adaptation of Dracula, we are told repeatedly: blood is lives, and more specifically, blood is stories. Agatha tells Jonathan this as she holds his indecipherable manuscript in her hands: “Perhaps stories flow in our veins, if you know how to read them”. In the novel, Jonathan, as a diarist enthralled to Dracula, is a self-insert for Bram Stoker, just as John Watson the chronicler was a self-insert for Arthur Conan Doyle, writing stories in both text and subtext. In BBC Dracula, Moffat and Gatiss appear to have boldly claimed Dracula himself as their self-insert. And look how well this works... in their universe, blood is stories, and their thirst is insatiable. Stories grant them immortality, but what keeps them young is the game. It’s being understood by a present-day audience. It’s Jonathan. It’s Lucy. It’s us. It may be intellectually satisfying to sit in one’s room setting puzzles, but if no one else can understand them, what’s that worth? Sphinx persuades Nina to keep playing after she threatens to leave, for exactly this reason. Genius needs an audience. Artists always wish to be understood.

I briefly mentioned a third character in Riddle of the Sphinx above (he’s also the ‘mystery guest’, 12 Across, in that crossword). As he says to his host,

TYLER: I always hated cryptic crosswords. Why can’t people say what they mean, rather than trying to trick you all the time?

And from 2017, that’s a familiar sentiment. In Riddle of the Sphinx, both Nina and Sphinx have a go at murdering each other—through the game—but they would both have survived if it weren’t for the interference of this outsider, who insists that the prop gun be used for real. Tyler ends the game, and cuts short Sphinx’s immortality, ensuring that he fulfills his namesake’s destiny by destroying himself.

So, even without the pleasure of finding a Nina, the Dracula crossword resonates with these themes, on a micro-scale. We watch Mark, pen in hand, playing a game that requires decoding encrypted clues; the solution he shows us (repeatedly, “Dracula is my lord”) is nonsense, and suggests that he is self-obsessed (a writer of Dracula obsessed with his own self-insert). But if we reject that surface solution, and figure out the cipher for ourselves—if we act as the Nina here—we find blood. We find stories.

Among these crossword clues, the one we hear Mark read aloud as he sits waiting for Dracula in The Dark Compass is the same one he tweeted along with the Guardian story:

A Mark Gatiss character wields a pen while playing a game. #justmofftissthings

The clue for 12 Across is easily recognized as not being about Dracula at all, but a different Victorian story, Frankenstein. This solution is a little too on the nose for even an “&Lit” clue (cryptic-speak for a relatively literal clue). And maybe Mark quoted it in his tweet because an easy clue makes for a better hook for the show. Or maybe he quoted it because he’s a fan of Victorian horror generally. But as someone used to seeing double meanings in both cryptic clues and literary subtext, I can’t help but be reminded of another unscrupulous doctor, who might also be described as a “tanner”. This ‘mystery guest’ doesn’t fit the grid, but... that never stopped Mark, now did it?

And of course...

... you know what they say about a weapon introduced in the first act.

#BBC Dracula #Inside No.9 #Sherlock #The Dark Compass #Riddle of the Sphinx #Steve Pemberton #Mark Gatiss #cryptic crosswords #text and subtext #learning the rules of the game #blood is lives #blood is stories #Chekhov's gun #BBC Dracula meta

[astrangergivingthestrangewelcome]

"Harker is so useless after the castle, now here's what a GOOD writer would do instead! [kills him off in drawn out torture porn]"

Tbh I would be fine with the drawn out torture porn if it was a story about how he copes with that and lives. I actually really quite enjoyed Undead Revenant Jonathan, and that scene with him and Dracula on the roof? Let me tell you I am so incredibly biased against mofftiss and I really never want to like anything they create but that scene was incredible from start to finish holyyy shittttt. It's the ending that really, really ruins it for me. Jonathan does not need to be a hero 24/7 but he would never Do That to all those people he would never condemn a whole nunnery to death and they just did it after that whole 1000/10 scene where he goes "I will do everything in my power to stop you like!! seething, raging throwing up. They do these things that make me think maybe they understand characters and then they just ruin them big ick ick ick.

While I'm here. I also am so disappointed in the way they sideline Mina too. It's Big Typical Mofftiss. Like as a concept I'm not bothered by Agatha Van Helsing, and I'm also not bothered by a bit of a Van Helsing Dracula romance like sure whatever go for it. I have no problem with turning the low-key patriarchal (I do give book Van Helsing the credit of saying he has an open mind and he does listen Mina like he's not a big bad patriarch he's just... kinda sexist) Van Helsing into a feminist lady. Murray Mysteries did it very well. I just think it's telling that they create a Strong Independent Back Talking Woman from Van Helsing whilst completely sidelining and ignoring MIna Murray completely. Like of course they would.

Also Lucy in this. Again this is not like. a moral failure on their part and if I watched BBC Dracula first before reading the book i probably wouldn't have hated their Lucy. Part of the reasons adaptations exist is to do new takes on characters so they're entitled to their vain attention seeking empty bored Lucy but by God I just think they're so fucking wrong. Like I do not understand the minds that look at book Lucy and are like "ok but what if we made her without character and what if we took away her joy at life." Like respectfully what is wrong with you.

I hate that enough of BBC Dracula is good and interesting that I care enough about it to get mad at things like this.

#bbc dracula spoilers #dracula

[ranthebow]

Thoughts about BBC Dracula

So, I ended up watching the entirety of BBC Dracula yesterday and I have thoughts. Don’t know how many will make it here and how coherent they will be, but I’ve just been thinking about it all day and I’d like to just write them down. Warning, spoilers ahead.

On one hand, I think I quite enjoyed watching it. There is clever dialogue, fun sexual tension with the women clearly being the top (Sister Agatha’s verbal whipping of Dracula in the first episode is such a delight). They also took the story of Dracula and tried to do something new with it, taking characters and situations we know and turning them into something new and surprising, just enough to keep me, an avid Dracula fan, on my toes.

However!

So, so many things were just...bad, at the same time. The clever dialogue sometimes turned into cringey, modern one-liners, because that’s just what shows do these days. Character’s actions didn’t make sense based on what we knew motivated them, usually within the second or third act of their own character arcs. Queerness was kind of thrown into the mix, in a really random way, just to say it was there? Like, yes, Dracula has a lot of queer energy, especially his interactions with Jonathan, even in the book, but considering how they handled that as the episodes went on (starting with a very dramatic “Did you have sexual intercourse with Count Dracula?” at the beginning of episode 1, just for the shock), it really felt awkwardly placed in there. The first episode was so queer coded. There was so much potential!! And then Jonathan dies, and all that potential is thrown out the window. It was strange. And then, the worst of it all...the very last episode. 

Episode 1 was focused on Jonathan Harker’s experience and escape from Count Dracula, as well as introducing Agatha Van Helsing and having her interact with Dracula in a very confident, sexually charged way, with her tentatively winning. That is, of course, until the end of the episode, where Dracula gains the upper hand and does something with her (we don’t know what yet). Then, episode 2, Dracula has the upper hand in another sexually charged battle of wits with Agatha. Only for...Agatha to die and episode 3 (the final episode) to be set 100 years later? With an Agatha look-a-like? This comes back to the idea that things were set up, had so much potential, and they went for the easy shock, rather than a satisfying conclusion. Like, yes, I was very shocked when Dracula walked out onto the beach and was immediately surrounded by helicopters and cars, indicating that he was no longer in the time we had just seen him in. But then it quickly became clear that was all they had planned to do with it. All the character interactions we had come to love and expect, just gone.  Everything we know to be true about the world, gone. It’s new and alien, even for the viewer. So much of episode 3 was just spent on setting up new characters. And for what? That’s not what I had hoped to see at that point. Agatha had won, than Dracula had won, making them equal for one last showdown in what could have been a very interesting episode 3. But that’s not what happened! It made me want to not care for the new characters, almost out of spite of how different the show suddenly felt. And the writers tried to rectify this problem (clearly showing they knew it was going to be a problem) by...essentially making Zoe be possessed by Agatha? Like, why though?? Zoe clearly was a different person and didn’t have the same chemistry, or history, that Agatha did with Dracula. And the writers knew that was the main hook of the first two episodes, the interactions between Dracula and Agatha. So to tie it all together, they had to bring Agatha back somehow? When they killed her in the first place, just for the shock of it? And then!! Even more annoying...they had set up this big thing, from episode one, that there was a singular reason that ties all of Dracula’s lore together, from his fear of the cross to his inability to stand the sun, all things that only he experienced, no other vampire. And it was just because he had convinced himself to be afraid? That’s what made him different from other vampires? That he was a coward? Then how did he stay sane for hundreds of years when, apparently, no other vampire can? Everything was made to seem so clever, only for everything that happened at the end, that ties it all together, to be so silly. That entire final scene in Dracula’s apartment is so unsatisfying, until the very end, when he is killing her (and killing himself in the process). That scene was lovely and an actually great ending. But it was clearly Agatha at that point again, so what was the point of making it modern in the first place?

Okay, I have so many more thoughts haha, from how BBC Dracula missed the point of Dracula (which I still want to see, even when adaptations do cool, new stuff with the story) to more things that I actually liked about it, because there is a lot more than I mentioned (like Lucy. I really liked Lucy...until they messed up her motivation just as she died too), but I feel like I wrote a lot so that might come later. Hey, if nothing else, this is a piece of media that made me think! I had fun with it, for sure. The more I like something, the more likely I am to critique it, especially when my like of it feels like such a guilty pleasure considering all these things I clearly didn’t like about it lol. I’ll always be a sucker for Dracula content, it’s true

#bbc dracula #dracula bbc #dracula #dracula discourse #agatha van helsing #van helsing #my thoughts #dracula 2020

[more-of-lesser]

Vampyre Man

I was going to start with the 1978 Mill on the Floss as my first Anton Lesser entry, but I've been poking around BBC Sounds because I have a lot of Christmas presents to make

SO

here is a Drama currently available via Sounds called Vampyre Man by Joseph O'Conner, with Darragh Kelly as Bram Stoker, and Anton Lesser as Henry Irving.

Vampyre Man tells (a slightly fictionalised) story of the relationship between Stoker (yeah, the Dracula guy) and Irving (Victorian era actor-manager, and first actor ever to be awarded a knighthood)

Stoker was Irving's business manager and personal assistant at the Lyceum theatre, and while in this role, he began writing Dracula. Stoker's relationship with Irving has been described as "the most important love relationship of his adult life", and most people reckon that the character of Dracula is strongly based on Irving himself.

Obviously if you are casting one of your closest friends as a compelling, hypnotising, manipulative and terrifying supernatural creature that sucks the life from others in your novel, you may have some things you are working through at the time...

Anyway, I fucking loved this. I knew nothing about Irving or Ellen Terry, or even Stoker's work for the theatre before listening, and now I want to go and read a few biographies on all of them. The drama itself doesn't claim to be completely accurate, and there's a few liberties taken (I don't think Stoker was with Irving when he died*, for example), but everything in this feels like it should have happened, and its a damn good story.

Most importantly, Anton Lesser seems to be having the time of his life playing Irving: I think his radio work is some of his best, and this is great part for him- malicious, vulnerable, earnest, passionate: it's all there, plus a pretty good Irish accent now and again.

Should I listen to it: I mean, I'm not ur mum, but I really really liked this, it's funny, it's touching, it's got a little bit of history in it, and it's about Dracula a bit too, and we all know how much we like getting letters from our friend Jonathan.

(*Spoilers, I guess, that everybody in this story is now dead, what with it being set in the 1800s)

#anton lesser #radio drama #dracula #bram stoker #henry irving

[the-timelord-a-tardis-stole]

I posted 2,971 times in 2022

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I tagged 1,020 of my posts in 2022

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Longest Tag: 139 characters

#i generally go with the idea that jonah was sick of hiring stuffy academic men as archivists so he chose the angriest young woman available

My Top Posts in 2022:

#5

I love the fact Sam agrees to leave the Shire like "oh yeah, I'll go with Frodo. And I'd love to see some elves". Then it's literally day 3 of travelling still in the Shire when he gets to meet them. Because it means from here on out, Sam's motivation is 100% love and loyalty

37 notes - Posted September 25, 2022

#4

I had 2 thoughts about Tom Bombadil when we were reading about him:

One of the possible in-universe explanations for Tom Bombadil is that he is God. While this is good idea with all Tom Bombadil's singing and Illuvatar's connection with music, it is way funnier is Tom Bombadil is a different being. Like imagine creating an empty world out of The Void, and you look in and theres just Some Guy Vibing

All his nonsense singing reminds me a bit of that episode of Stellar Firma where Trexel is making up riddles but they end up steadily turing into funny little nonsense rhymes.

40 notes - Posted October 6, 2022

#3

There's a couple of moments that we've read so far that will form interesting parallels later on (spoilers for the first time readers):

The hobbits feeling awkward carrying swords for the first time vs. when they return to Bree and Barliman is like "yeah, of course no one hassled you on the way here, you're all fully decked out in armour with swords" to which the hobbits are like "oh wow we forgot that was actually weird"

Strider and Merry meeting for the first time after Merry encountered a Black Rider vs. when Merry is one of the people Aragorn has to heal with his Kingly Healing Hands(TM)

Sam standing up to Strider when he first meets him vs. Sam's similar but even more defensive behaviour when they first speak to Faramir. I really love this one bc Sam is absolutely willing to challenge some Man who is almost twice his height and is skilled with a sword.

Also, this is less of a parallel and more of a common thread throughout the story but I love the frequency with which the hobbits have been meeting unexpected friends after leaving Bag End. There's a quote from Elrond when the fellowship is being formed about meeting "friends unlooked for" or something (I don't remember the exact phrase) and I love that this theme was set down immediately after the hobbits left

42 notes - Posted October 6, 2022

#2

I find it very interesting that when the hobbits were like "tell us one of the Old Tales" and Aragorn chooses a comforting one in the form of the Tale of Beren and Luthien. In isolation, it's a good choice. There's hope amid hardship and people achieving impossible tasks with the power of love. It's very comforting if you're about to be attacked by evil creatures.

However, with the context of Aragorn and Arwen, you have to ask how many times has that been Aragorn's comfort to himself? How many cold nights in the wilderness has Aragorn spent imagining Beren doing the same thing? Does the successful taking of a Silmaril turn Aragorn's task of becoming King of Gondor and Arnor from "Impossible" to only "Very Difficult"? Or does it turn it into a sort of destiny that can and will be fulfilled? That he won't be stuck roaming the world alone for all his long life?

76 notes - Posted October 7, 2022

My #1 post of 2022

That kid really committed to the munchikin bit

96 notes - Posted November 25, 2022

Get your Tumblr 2022 Year in Review →

#tumblr2022 #year in review #my 2022 tumblr year in review #your tumblr year in review #nice i posted on average more than once a month this year and all my top posts werent toy show related #its a low bar but i cleared it #also yikes 52 posts about the toy show im almost sorry to all the non irish people

[moondrama]

Watched Netflix/BBC One's Dracula (2020) by Steven Moffat and Mark Gatiss last night and today. It had a slightly similar feel to Doctor Who which I enjoyed. I was prepared to expect deviations from the original plot so none of that bothered me. I also thought it would be too scary but I looked away at just the right times so none of the jumpscares and ugly faces ruined the watching experience.

I liked it, but wasn't a fan of some things. Potential spoilers below.

Generally, I dislike how religion is now mocked and made fun of so blatantly in recent shows but I guess that's the politically correct way to depict it in the West and anything else would be cancelled or unpopular.

I also found that the end, where they just dismissed all the vampire weaknesses as 'myths' and untrue was so...lame. Wish they had stayed true to the usual characteristics of a vampire's being.

I enjoyed the second episode the most (the ship episode) and I guess the first was closest to the original story so it was nice too. I love love love mysteries set during long voyages on ships and trains.

I don't mind the story transitioning to modern day. It would actually have been really cool to see Dracula gel in with modern society and do evil stuff there but they just made him into a science subject and gave other characters woke dialogue and gave us that random ending.

But I did enjoy it, it wasn't bad.

I really really want to watch something with an old-fashioned vampire working in a business, police, politics or legal setting in the modern world (no school vampires or lustful partying sexual vampires pls). Just a powerful, graceful vampire trying to act like humans but doing evil corruption in business or politics behind the scenes.

#vampire #horror #steven moffat #mark gatiss #claes bang #dolly wells #count dracula #dracula (2020)

[alexisnoir]

I have watched all 3 episodes of Dracula. What do I think of the show?

When it comes to Dracula himself, I have never read any books about him, never watched a movie about him or any other show whatsoever. Yet I knew who or what Dracula is. However the miniseries by Mark Gatiss and Steven Moffat has surprised me in many good ways and also hasn’t surprised me at all because the show is so predictible.

Let’s start from the beginning, shall we? 

ATTENTION! POSSIBLE SPOILERS! IF YOU HAVEN’T SEEN THE SHOW, TURN AROUND AND DON’T READ FURTHER!

I had here a long, very long text about all three episodes but I decided to make it brief. No reason for me to spoil the episodes minute by minute right?

Episode one gives us an introduction into Dracula, Jonathan Harker, sister Agatha Van Helsing and Mina, Jonathans fiance. 

We get to know how Jonathan become so sick, why he’s in the convent and so on. We also get to see how Dracula played by Claes Bang transforms from this old man 

to this handsome man. 

We also get quite interesting introduction between sister Agatha Van Helsing and Dracula himself but I am afraid that I’d get blocked have I posted the scenes here XD

Anyway, to be brief as I promised myself. 

The show is not without faults. Three 1,5 h episodes are not enough to give us what we want. The first episode, yes does just that but the second and third? Not so much. I’m not saying the show is boring or bad, quite the contrary, however the third episode should be the best and yet in my opinion it is the weakest of them all even though the setting is the best.

Dracula in the future, in our times, a myth or a truth? Dracula can absorb knowledge and some memories through blood, as he says: blood is lives. 

The first two episodes give us very good start of a story that could’ve been as good as BBC Sherlock if not for the, in my opinion, rushed episode 3 and its ending.

Episode 2 at its end introduces Dracula to the modern times, as we see he is underwater after Demeter blows up. We see Dracula destroying the lid of the coffin with his fist and walk on the bottom right to the shore of England to be met by Jonathan Harker Foundation CEO Zoe Van Helsing. 

How Dracula gets out from the coffin is not the only WTF moment I get from this episode. There a few. I’ll list them below

- the coffin. How did he bolted the lid to the coffin itself? It had nails in! How?

- in episode 3 Dracula runs with the help of his bat friends and steals a modern tux since his clothes are wet beyond anything. I’m surprised they have survived salty water for so long (first plot hole)

- then we see Dracula in some couples home where the husband is dead in the white box - fridge - after of course feeding on him. Dracula wanted to feed on the woman too however she has a cross on a chain around her neck so that stops him

- We see for the first time a crying, emotional Dracula, he is watching the sunset on a TV but that’s not a WTF moment it’s just a interesting moment

- of course the Jonathan Harker foundation finds him which if I must confess is weird that the big machine that later destroys the house wan’t heard! I mean, seriously?! (second plot hole) Those things are loud even when they’re just in motion and not destroying anything.

- he has to go into the box but after they destroy a bit of the house, there’s sun shining on the box, so how is he suppose to get in the bloody box now? 

- he manages to lure Zoe into the house but when he tries to feed on her he can’t because she has cancer and is dying, the blood is poisonous to him. He loses consciousness and is put into the box then transported into the JHF.

- he wakes up long enough to see Jonathan Harker painting and is put into big glass cage which is operated from the outside, so they are able to open the roof enough to scare him and keep him in place with the sun.

- I have big problem with this episode because he is given access to modern technology, to books mostly but he manages to figure out a password to WIFI which is his name (seriously?!) and he SKYPE calls a lawyer from the same law firm Jonathan Harker was 123 years ago. I can’t imagine that a lawyer knowing he is dealing with a real ass vampire, warlord and says he has rights like everybody else and they just give in? I know he, the lawyer, threatened them with exposing what they’re doing here but who would believe one man? After all, the Foundation works with mercenaries. That whole lawyer story is just so not original. I mean there’s a guy stationed at all times next to his bloody glass cage and he can clearly hear him so I’m like why haven’t he alerted them to him calling someone?! Why?!

- and since we are still in the Foundation basement or whatever - he is in the cage, they open the roof, the sun shines onto the part of the cage and yet when Zoe has to take his blood SHE needs to step or at the very least her hands need to be in the shadow since his hand cannot be in the sun. She threatened him with people and that they’d shoot him but we do know bullets do not work on him and before they’d be more people with stakes to kill him I bet he would be long gone.

- also why haven’t we seen any holy water being used against him, since he is the devil himself?

- When he is out, he is in this big apartment (where the money for that apartament come from?), working out, staying, living, goes out at night with Lucy and he is fascinated by her, says she came the closest to be his real bride.

What I don’t understand is this:

- how Dracula can see his reflection in the glass window when apparently he as a vampire shouldn’t have one?

- how come at the very end he doesn’t burn by the sun when Zoe throws off the curtain and there is not only the sun but also the cross sign? Shouldn’t he be affected? I know it is said that it’s only in his mind and yet, the original tells otherwise. It’s a bit like with the Doctor and the Master revelation... doesn’t sit right with me.

- Zoe is dying either way even after drinking Dracula’s blood which gives her a part of sister Agatha to talk to but we then see Dracula actually drink Zoe’s blood but I’m like - okay? So he drinks her blood, maybe now that she injected his blood he will be able to feed from her but then we see them both dead in the afterlife of some sort? Should at the very least Zoe be able to come back to life? Doesn’t it work that way?

- when we are at the topic of Zoe dying when Dracula feed from her, how come Agatha Van Helsing has died? From my understanding of the situation with Piotr in the beginning of episode 2, all it takes is one feeding for the person to be able to come back to life, yet she didn’t? Even though he feed from he multiple times?  

The show would’ve benefited more if it was 8 one hour episodes instead of miniseries. From what I’ve gathered they’re thinking of doing season 2 but how could they bring them back to life? I have absolutely no idea.

Do I like the show itself? Yes I do. Even though the third episode could’ve been better thought through and flesh out I still enjoyed watching it. 

Some stuff will bug me to no end, like with episode 3 of BBC Sherlock season 4 but that’s another story for another time, maybe.

#bbc dracula #dracula #dracula 2020 #mark gatiss #steven moffat #claes bang