youworeflowersinyourhair

[youworeflowersinyourhair]

decided to make everyone's least favourite christmas song a little more dracula flavoured, so here, presenting Harker There's Wolves Outside.

lyrics under the cut if you can't read my writing, and also in the alt text with the image description

panel 1 - jonathan - I really can't stay dracula - but Harker, there's wolves outside panel 2 - jonathan - I've got to get away dracula - but Harker, there's wolves outside panel 3 - dracula - and what about all your clothes jonathan - you can just mail me those panel 4 - dracula - I'll take your hands - jonathan - they're just like ice panel 5 - jonathan - my fiancée will be so worried dracula - Harker, friend, whats the hurry panel 6 - jonathan - Mr Hawkins will be wanting a sign dracula - Harker, tonight is mine panel 7 - jonathan - I really can't stay dracula - but Harker, there's wolves outside

#dracula #bram stoker #jonathan harker #Count Dracula

[youworeflowersinyourhair]

the most insane double casting i’ve heard of is ophelia and horatio being played by the same actress. the implications of that drive me crazy

[youworeflowersinyourhair]

It’s so funny to me that Victor Frankenstein was obsessed with Medieval and Renaissance alchemists and when he went to university to actually study Science his professors were like wtf what century do you live in.

[youworeflowersinyourhair]

I miss blorbo from my emails :(

#dracula #dracula daily #classic literature

[youworeflowersinyourhair]

As a long-time fan of Stoker's book, Daily Dracula has me absolutely stoked because after decades of movie and TV adaptations slipping further and further from Stoker's work, and watering down Count Dracula's character into a generic romantic vampire and his enemies into milquetoast Victorian twats, the Internet is rediscovering that "Dracula" is really about a Victorian D&D party going full murderhobo on a megalomaniacal vampire supervillain as revenge for vamping their polycule sweetheart.

[youworeflowersinyourhair]

can’t decide if i feel amazed or betrayed that everyone who’d already read the book kept this a secret

[youworeflowersinyourhair]

in all seriousness though. we’ve seen how little Jack wrote of those last few days leading up to the final confrontation. do you think he ever regrets it? he may not have known it at the time, but those were the last days that anyone got to spend with Quincey. does he regret not noting them down in more detail? not writing down that horse story he shared on the second day, to distract Jack from the way the wind was whipping at their faces? not noting how, even facing those dire circumstances, he was always gentle with the horses and yes, even with Jack himself, knowing how bad his friend was at taking care of himself?

Arthur didn’t get a goodbye, Jack tells himself, I should have written things down, he would have appreciated it, and the poor man’s lost so much already. the Harkers, too, are mourning him so greatly, no doubt Mina is blaming herself for this, because she was the one that needed saving, wouldn’t hearing how his last days went bring her some comfort, as hearing Lucy’s did in their own way? (he doesn’t think of doing it for himself, but the others never forget that he’s also lost a dear friend, and needs the same love and support they do)

maybe he tries to write down what he can remember. it’s all a bit of a blur, but he tries, and Mina helps by typing it out on the train ride back, so he can just dictate like it’s his phonograph. they have to take frequent breaks, because sometimes the tears just get to be too much for either of them. maybe Arthur helps, because he also wants a record of this wonderful friend, so he can look back on the stories the man spun over the campfires long past and remember the warmth they brought

[youworeflowersinyourhair]

bad dracula movie idea: centering the story around dracula, slutshaming/sexualizing lucy, making mina dracula's wife, having jonathan cheat on mina etc.

good dracula movie idea: just the book plot in movie format. jonathan is a wife guy, lucy is sweet, mina is a nerd, van helsing is the corn metaphor professor 🌽,there is a surprisingly angsty cowboy character that shoots batcula with a gun, seward has a bi awakening and all the wolves are good boys.

chaotic dracula movie idea: just the most over the top shit you have ever seen. mina is the ultimate girlboss, lucy is so sweet it makes the audience's teeth rot through the screen, seward is just an awkward nerd with thick glasses and zero success with women, van helsing is the best vampire hunter in the world, every dracula appearance is accompanied with a slapstick joke ridiculing him, quincey wears a cowboy hat that keeps getting bigger and bigger every time he appears and most importantly by the end it's revealed that the whole story is not told by the main characters' pov but rather it was just van helsing narrating his version of the story to put young quincey to sleep, which immediately explains all the corniness (pun most definitely invented) the poor audience just witnessed.

#is that not the book?

[youworeflowersinyourhair]

can't believe its over 😭

[youworeflowersinyourhair]

The Harker family being perfectly kind and polite people, perfectly respectable to their neighbors around the Hawkins estate despite them being from humbler beginnings than Mr. Hawkins, but all of them being… just a liiiittle off.

Maybe it’s the way the light hangs in their eyes as they take their twilight constitutional, little Quincy peeking out of his pram, seemingly capable of making eye contact over great distances. Maybe it’s the way both he and Mina seem to uncannily know Jonathan’s location at any time (but then again his mother always had a head for memorization—just listen to the woman talk about trains!). Maybe it’s Jonathan having… just a slightly fierce air about him underneath all the sober pleasantries of being a partner at Hawkins’ firm, a passion that has cooled into steady and pleasant devotion, but still burns deep and hot like embers. Along with frequent visits to and from the distinguished Lord Godalming, the family seems to also greatly enjoy visits to the local asylum, well—they’re just being charitable, probably? But why do they all seem to perk up like that when they hear a dog barking in the distance, or a flutter of wings? Why do they stare out over the sea with that odd focus? Why does it feel like they know something we don’t, and why are we scared to ask?

[youworeflowersinyourhair]

What if Mina screamed specifically to wake van Helsing from his trance?

People have suggested that Mina's scream may have been because she was vibing with the Girlies, so when Abe gets to butchering she reacts. But she screams before he does anything, and crucially so - he's becoming entranced by the overuse of the word voluptuous and is unable to act until he hears the scream. It shakes him out of whatever is happening, just like the baying of the wolves shakes Jonathan out of his hypnosis when the Girlies materialize out of the moonbeams at him on the 24th.

(And it's interesting - a lot of the vampire trances seem to be auditory. The glass harmonica voices - but broken by competing sound. There's an essay in that somewhere).

What if Mina screamed not because she was vibing the Girlies but because she was vibing van Helsing?

Okay so like, I know this is a stretch, but bear with me.

Let us for the moment assume that when Mina said she knew her husband was heading this way she meant exactly what she said - her Dracu-vision is somehow also picking up Jonathan. (And maybe yesterday she really was tapping into Jonathan's recollection of the pass as well, just as she said, though not quite for the reasons she gave). In that case - how? Well, if Jonathan did get drinkt in the Castle, then Dracula ended up all full of his blood, and that blood is now in Mina, via the Oct 3rd exchange. And that blood connection has power. I still maintain that Jonathan used it to read Dracula's mind immediately before the shovel attack. It seems likely that Dracula used it to put him into an unwakable trance during his attack on Mina (the depth of trance we've only otherwise seen in Mina herself directly under Dracula's influence as mediated by blood exchange).

Just as Lucy felt Arthur's presence and love all around her, via his blood in her veins post transfusion, and just as Mina has been hypnotically walking back her blood connection to Dracula to help track him, even against his desires, it's possible that Mina may be able to also draw on a blood connection to Jonathan (mediated via Dracula OOPS), which would explain today's surety if (presumably) his whereabouts.

So what does that have to do with van Helsing? WELL, if Mina has an exploitable blood connection with Dracula's other victims, that includes the rest of the boys (minus Quincey) via Lucy. She's got Jack, Art, and van Helsing's blood in her too, technically. Mina is sitting at the top of the fluid exchange food chain. (Renfield would be so jealous)

Mina has been getting more vampiry since coming to the Borgo Pass - fully nocturnal, no longer taking human food, etc. What if she's gaining vampire powers too? What if, just as Dracula was able to follow the blood connection back into Mina's mind at noon on the 28th, to rifle around looking for the Plan, Mina was able to do likewise and ride along in van Helsing's mind for his assault on the Castle? He says he waited till the sun was quite high before beginning. Mina's scream could have plausibly come precisely at noon, when even in her sleep her vampire powers should be strongest.

Again, this is quite a stretch. But I like the idea of Mina being able to participate more actively in what is going on. The idea that everyone is contributing something - this wasn't a one man affair. Jonathan's journaled experiences, van Helsing's blacksmith hammer, and Mina's incredibly timely scream. Wouldn't it be nice for it to have been on purpose? The scream she couldn't use to save herself on October 3rd, at last being deployed to save van Helsing. And it would fit the themes of people supporting each other, no one being alone, and every contribution, no matter how small or hopeless, being meaningful. (Anyone here ever see Hitchcock's the Man Who Knew Too Much? The whole movie hinges on an otherwise helpless woman's well-timed scream, and I have emotions about it).

Anyway. I would rather Mina's scream be purposeful and accomplish what it intends - weaponizing her condition against her enemy and in defense of her friends, rather than another reflex of passive victimhood. I would rather she be as much an active participant as possible, in whatever way she is able. And I, at least, am satisfied with the mental gymnastics necessary to make that possible.

[youworeflowersinyourhair]

THINKINGGG about how gawain says “is this really all there is?” and the green knight says “what else ought there be?” and then we see an extended vision of what else there could be if gawain runs away. he’ll abandon the woman he loves and take her child from her. he’ll marry a woman he doesn’t even know. his son will die in battle. his kingdom will fall. he’ll live each day in fear of dying. thinking about when anne carson said, “to live past the end of your myth is a perilous thing.” thinking about how gawain sees all of this and takes off the belt. just thinking a lot about the green knight.

[youworeflowersinyourhair]

tbh i cannot pick my favorite part of dracula daily

is it the memes? the art, the serious and gorgeous and silly and charming art? the new designs and reimaginings of characters in ways that challenge both historical and modern adaptations? the thoughtful analysis of the story, the historical notes being shared? the critical lens being cast over it alongside context for why and how stoker made his choices? the redemption of lucy and jonathan in pop culture? the complete embracing of the polycula? the entirety of the sexyman (gender neutral) bracket? the fact that the entire book is in the public domain but people still tag spoilers and refuse to read ahead? the reminder that people can get together and enjoy a serialized text, making jokes and discussing themes and coming up with theories that enhance and expand upon the text, even when that text is a famous 125-year-old novel that has never been adapted properly?

that, in the era of streaming and bingeing and assault on all our senses by advertising and stories carefully constructed to be sold to everyone, we all collectively said "fuck that let's get dracula delivered to our emails and read it together"?

idk, but i have really enjoyed these last several months

[youworeflowersinyourhair]

"You forget that I am the train fiend" is one of the single funniest lines of literature I've read in a long while

#autistic mina rights!

[youworeflowersinyourhair]

Do you guys remember how kidnap fantasies were popular on wattpad because young girls and queer teens were both made to feel shame at the thought of their own sexualities, so the fantasy of being kidnapped totally against their will was a way for them to engage with a romantic or sexual fantasy without feeling morally in the wrong for doing so? Added bonus that the fantasy involved being whisked away from repressive environments like home or school, right?

Finding out that Bram Stoker was in a sexless marriage and that scholars believe that he very likely was closeted gay puts the entire book into perspective as to WHY it reads EXACTLY like a self insert wattpad Dracula kidnap fic:

"I TOTALLY love my wife and would never do anything that an upstanding Good Straight Working Man wouldn't do but oh nooo, big strong man with broad back and strong enough arms to carry me back to bed like a princess trapped me and claimed me as his, completely against my will 👉👈 But he protects me against the bad evil sexual women (who I assure you, I am TOTALLY sexually attracted to, as any straight man with a choice would be) but trust me, I do NOT want ANY of this. What's that? The Count is not capable of feeling love? Would be a shame if I had the special ability to change tha-"

#I’d like to second the request for sources #reminds me very much of a thesis I just read about Carmilla #maybe I’ll post about that sometime

[youworeflowersinyourhair]

I do love that Jack starts today's entry by complaining that he's been separated from his emotional support phonograph.

[youworeflowersinyourhair]

KNOWING JK ROWLINGS SPECIFIC BRAND OF BIGOTRY CASTS MUCH OF HER WORK IN NEW AND UNFLATTERING LIGHT IT TURNS OTHERWISE BENIGN PLOT POINTS INTO A DEEPLY UNPLEASANT RACIAL SUPREMACIST NARRATIVE

KNOWING HP LOVECRAFTS SPECIFIC BRAND OF BIGOTRY MAKES MUCH OF HIS WORK REALLY FUNNY IT TURNS HORRIFIC ELDRITCH MONSTERS INTO POTENTIAL BOYFRIENDS