Rater Reads Dracula

[Kareeah_Indaga]

…maybe he dropped his phone and it broke before he hit ‘Send?’

[Fyraltari]

That's it, I'm calling the gendarme!

Just the one?

[Brother Oni]

Is it illegal in Transylvania?

Well Romania and yes, under the EC's "Interpretation of the Directive 1999/5/EC".

[Eldan]

It'd make the bit where

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Harker is detained inside Castle Dracula against his will and sees his captor feed a baby to his wives and the bay's mother to his pet wolves.

harder to justify. Like, you'd think some of his followers would notify the police.

"Oh god, Harker is being dramatic again. We get it, you're a vegan and someone ate a lamb."

(He has three followers, and two of them are from work and don't read what he writes.)

[Khedrac]

It's a while since I read Dracula, but if I remember correctly most of what Harker writes is letters to his intended or private notes for his diary (remember, he's a lawyer so his client's business is confidential and he would have to be very careful in what he wrote for public consumpion).

As such, this is not what he posts on Facebook or Twitter. A little might go onto Facebook - where he is and the strange customs of the natives (but little about Dracula beyond how his castle looks) - but this is more his private Whatsapp or similar feed to his finance and other very close friends.

[Brother Oni]

It's a while since I read Dracula, but if I remember correctly most of what Harker writes is letters to his intended or private notes for his diary (remember, he's a lawyer so his client's business is confidential and he would have to be very careful in what he wrote for public consumpion).

As such, this is not what he posts on Facebook or Twitter. A little might go onto Facebook - where he is and the strange customs of the natives (but little about Dracula beyond how his castle looks) - but this is more his private Whatsapp or similar feed to his finance and other very close friends.

I believe all Dr Seward's chapters are transcriptions of patient notes or excerpts from his personal journal, which are under similarly tight controls these days.

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I think a fair bit of the foreboding comes from Seward's interactions with Renfield, who acts as exposition for what Dracula and hence what vampirism is, something that's been brought into popular culture because of the novel itself.

Unfortunately I can't think of a way of making these public within modern media beyond something like Liveleak.

[Kareeah_Indaga]

I believe all Dr Seward's chapters are transcriptions of patient notes or excerpts from his personal journal, which are under similarly tight controls these days.

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I think a fair bit of the foreboding comes from Seward's interactions with Renfield, who acts as exposition for what Dracula and hence what vampirism is, something that's been brought into popular culture because of the novel itself.

Unfortunately I can't think of a way of making these public within modern media beyond something like Liveleak.

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Maybe Mina’s a hacker instead of a ‘train fiend’?

[Sapphire Guard]

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Drac takes his phone, he writes it up after he escapes.

[Velaryon]

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Drac takes his phone, he writes it up after he escapes.

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Drac has J-Harks sign an NDA upon arrival at the castle, then confiscates his phone for the duration of his stay citing leaks from lower-level staff, all of whom have been dismissed because of it (thus explaining the lack of servants in the castle),

[Kantaki]

Spoiler: Dracula with Social Media

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What could work is making it a compilation in the aftermath.
Of course the characters didn't publish the confidential stuff on some social media site, but it got filed together for a investigation and/or documentary about the (attempted*) murder of the good Count by some conspiracy theorists.

*If it even gets to that point. The heroes pull a few stunts you probably shouldn't talk about on Twitter.

Also, the idea of Drac winning because he has Facebook is kinda funny.

[Grim Portent]

The real question is what would everyone's social media names be?

I vote for Dracula's being @DracInBlack

[The Glyphstone]

Nah, he's more subtle than that.

@TheRealAlucard. No one will suspect him.

But yeah, you'd have to massage the plot slightly to make it fit the medium, a lawyer won't be posting confidential stuff on Twitter.

[Peelee]

Nah, he's more subtle than that.

Psh. Obviously you didn't see the medical documentary Scrubs, which had several exposés on Dr. Acula.

[Saintheart]

But yeah, you'd have to massage the plot slightly to make it fit the medium, a lawyer won't be posting confidential stuff on Twitter.

One way to do that would be to imply Dracula is being protected from up on high, or an incompetent law enforcement authority doesn't want the facts regarding a series of murders to come out. Dress up all the posting as recovered from Internet archive, shared on dark web or via blockchain or similar. You start with dress-ups looking like they were posted on 8chan or similar, stick on a few news articles from reputable news websites, then something from Wikileaks, and maybe finish up with pdfs allegedly sourced from dark web sites or similar.

EDIT: Gah, I got vampire-ninja'd by half the thread above.



The 'collected documents' way of doing a novel can be done in the horror genre. It's called World War Z, done by (of all people) the son of Mel Brooks the comedian, and it's a beautiful read.

[Fyraltari]

But yeah, you'd have to massage the plot slightly to make it fit the medium, a lawyer won't be posting confidential stuff on Twitter.

A competent lawyer. Jonathan Harker...

The 'collected documents' way of doing a novel can be done in the horror genre. It's called World War Z, done by (of all people) the son of Mel Brooks the comedian, and it's a beautiful read.

Meh, 5/10.

[Velaryon]

Nah, he's more subtle than that.

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Is he though? He devoured literally the entire crew on his ship to England, to the point where the ship crashes into the dock because the last person left alive had lashed himself to the wheel. And then witnesses saw a large black dog leap off the deck and run away. Not what I'd call particularly subtle.

[The Glyphstone]

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Is he though? He devoured literally the entire crew on his ship to England, to the point where the ship crashes into the dock because the last person left alive had lashed himself to the wheel. And then witnesses saw a large black dog leap off the deck and run away. Not what I'd call particularly subtle.

Write Alucard backwards, then recalculate my estimation as to Drac's level of subtlety.

[Sapphire Guard]

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Drac puts in a fair amount of effort into blending in and hiding, a big part of what Harker is for is to teach him how to avoid standing out in England. Hence his efforts to be a convincing 'Victorian gentleman', which got pop cultured as him always looking like that even though it was originally a disguise.

[Peelee]

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Drac puts in a fair amount of effort into blending in and hiding, a big part of what Harker is for is to teach him how to avoid standing out in England. Hence his efforts to be a convincing 'Victorian gentleman', which got pop cultured as him always looking like that even though it was originally a disguise.

Dracula 2000 goes back to that idea!

Look, I watched it, so y'all are gonna hear about it, dammit.

[Fyraltari]

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Is he though? He devoured literally the entire crew on his ship to England, to the point where the ship crashes into the dock because the last person left alive had lashed himself to the wheel. And then witnesses saw a large black dog leap off the deck and run away. Not what I'd call particularly subtle.

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Like you've never overindulged on snacks during a long trip.
It's strongly implied that the ship got to London because Dracula summoned a storm to guide it there, in which case he did not actually need any of the sailors. And people baleme the captain for the killing not the black dog (how could they?).

[Bavarian itP]

Dracula 2000 goes back to that idea!

Look, I watched it, so y'all are gonna hear about it, dammit.

You are free to not like that movie. God loves you anyway.

[Metastachydium]

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Is he though? He devoured literally the entire crew on his ship to England

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NOt quite literally. The captain starved to death or whatever and the first mate committed suicide.

[PontificatusRex]

I wish I could upvote this. I mentioned it above that while a modern writer could simply the text, it simply wouldn't feel like the journal and letters of a 19th Century person.

To take this simplification to its extreme, imagine Dracula re-written for the modern day via the medium of Instagram comments and Twitter.

Years ago I was at an event where someone performed a reading of the epistolary novel Dangerous Liaisons with all the letters translated into text messages. it was pretty awesome.

[Rater202]

Years ago I was at an event where someone performed a reading of the epistolary novel Dangerous Liaisons with all the letters translated into text messages. it was pretty awesome.

Maybe doing that with Dracula can be a forum group project at some point in the future.

It's gonna be a bit longer. I keep getting distracted.

[Rater202]

Okay, I've put this off long enough. Can't guarantee this will be the whole chapter though. May have bitten off more than I can chew with this proect.

Chapter 2.

Next entry in Harker's journal.

Harker is pretty sure he was asleep because otherwise, he would have noticed the approach to the castle.

The driver unloads JArker's luggage and Harker is impressed by his prodigious strength... Which I think I missed the previous mention of.

Upon getting to the castle proper, Harker has no idea what he's supposed to do next. There's no door knocker or anything, and here we find out that he is a solicitor. I have no idea what this means, and I don't know if it's becuase the word means different things in American English versus English English or if it's a word whose meaning has changed with time. He mentions it in the context oof traveling to help a foreign noble by an estate in Londom so... Realitor?

Does it mean realtor? Anyway, the door opens and we finally encounter our titular character.

Within, stood a tall old man, clean shaven save for a long white moustache, and clad in black from head to foot, without a single speck of colour about him anywhere. He held in his hand an antique silver lamp, in which the flame burned without chimney or globe of any kind, throwing long quivering shadows as it flickered in the draught of the open door. The old man motioned me in with his right hand with a courtly gesture, saying in excellent English, but with a strange intonation:—

so this matches not a single depiction of Dracula I've ever seen.

Dracula very elaborately welcomes Harker and orders him to enter of his own free will, and only moves to engage him once Harker steps over the threshold.

...To my mind this brings the idea about vampires being unable to enter a residence or other non-public place without an invitation. Is Stoker trying to imply that it goes both ways? That they can only bring people into their own homes if that person accepts an invitation? Or is Dracula in the habit of making such gestures in the hopes of convincing others to do the same for him later on?

Dracula is immediately very polite, hospitable... Dare I say lively? If anything, he's overly friendly. It's... Kind of offputting compared to adaptions.

If I didn't know how this story was gonna go, I'd have thought that Dracula would be one of the protagonists. The goofy comic relief. An off character to name the book after, but...

I know that the Count is up to something, but he does seem to be an excellent host.

...He's doing everything himself because he ate all of his servants and hasn't replaced them yet. Like, not even a guess, I'm just assuming that's the case.

The dinner is described as being quite good, which given Dracula's apparent lack of servants indicates that he is a competent chef. Odd, for someone who does not eat... Food.

(Is it a pride thing? I understand that Dracula in this novel has quite a lot of pride.)

After dinner, Harker does not question why Dracula has cigars if he doesn't smoke.

A more in-depth description of the count.

His face was a strong—a very strong—aquiline, with high bridge of the thin nose and peculiarly arched nostrils; with lofty domed forehead, and hair growing scantily round the temples but profusely elsewhere. His eyebrows were very massive, almost meeting over the nose, and with bushy hair that seemed to curl in its own profusion. The mouth, so far as I could see it under the heavy moustache, was fixed and rather cruel-looking, with peculiarly sharp white teeth; these protruded over the lips, whose remarkable ruddiness showed astonishing vitality in a man of his years. For the rest, his ears were pale, and at the tops extremely pointed; the chin was broad and strong, and the cheeks firm though thin. The general effect was one of extraordinary pallor.

The next paragraph goes on to describe Dracula's hands as being squat, with sharp nails and coarse hair, especially in the center of his palms(get your juvenile jokes out of the way now) and mentions that his breath is literally nauseating.

Again, does not quite match the suave, well-groomed sex god that the count is typically depicted as.

They sit in silence for a bit and then hear the howling of the wolves, which leads to what I think is one of the most well-known lines from this book. “Listen to them—the children of the night. What music they make!”

Dracula then bids Harker goodnight and notes that they will begin their business next afternoon and bids that Harker sleep in as late as he likes. Creepy guy, definitely evil, but still. Good host.

The next entry is long as frick and I maybe made a mistake doing this so late, I will have the rest of the chapter by tomorrow evening at the latest.

[Gnoman]

Upon getting to the castle proper, Harker has no idea what he's supposed to do next. There's no door knocker or anything, and here we find out that he is a solicitor. I have no idea what this means, and I don't know if it's becuase the word means different things in American English versus English English or if it's a word whose meaning has changed with time. He mentions it in the context oof traveling to help a foreign noble by an estate in Londom so... Realitor?

British
a member of the legal profession qualified to deal with conveyancing, the drawing up of wills, and other legal matters.

noun: conveyancing

the branch of law concerned with the preparation of documents for the transferring of property.
the action of preparing documents for the transfer of property.

In this context, a solicitor is a lawyer that specializes in real estate matters.

[Saintheart]

They sit in silence for a bit and then hear the howling of the wolves, which leads to what I think is one of the most well-known lines from this book. “Listen to them—the children of the night. What music they make!”

And that, in my opinion, is because of the 1992 Francis Ford Coppola film which took refuge in audacity and turned it up to 11: Bram Stoker's Dracula. Gary Oldman stars and has the absolute time of his life in the title role, chewing as much scenery as nubile necks. It's my second favourite guilty pleasure, bested only by Mortal Kombat (no, the techno one, not the one with the best Kano characterisation ever put to screen).

Fun facts: the Coppola movie was actually made the subject of a novelisation. Yes, they actually paid a guy to write the book of the film of Bram Stoker's Dracula.

Fred Saberhagen, the writer who penned said novelisation, joked that he wished he'd gotten the contract to novelise Kenneth Branagh's 1994 Frankenstein movie, because the promos could have read: "Mary Shelley's Frankenstein ... by the author of Bram Stoker's Dracula!" (And Saberhagen, incidentally, had his own series of vampire novels: The Dracula Tape is a retelling of the Bram Stoker novel from Dracula's point of view.)

[Gnoman]

And that, in my opinion, is because of the 1992 Francis Ford Coppola film which took refuge in audacity and turned it up to 11: Bram Stoker's Dracula. Gary Oldman stars and has the absolute time of his life in the title role, chewing as much scenery as nubile necks. It's my second favourite guilty pleasure, bested only by Mortal Kombat (no, the techno one, not the one with the best Kano characterisation ever put to screen).

Bela Lugosi hams that line up in the 1931 film, long before Gary Oldman was even born. Far superior to Oldman's delivery.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Xmz-p9FYW8

[Khedrac]

I think you are in for quite a few more surprises, if I recall correctly the standard "modern" depicition of Dracula (and by "modern" I includes all film versions) goes back to an early stage adaptation. The Dracula we know is not the Dracula Bram Stoker imagined when he wrote.

[Saintheart]

I think you are in for quite a few more surprises, if I recall correctly the standard "modern" depicition of Dracula (and by "modern" I includes all film versions) goes back to an early stage adaptation.

That would likely be Nosferatu, the 1922 silent film.