Dracula (novel)

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Name: Dracula
Abbreviation(s):
Creator: Bram Stoker
Date(s): 1897
Medium: Novel
Country of Origin: England
External Links: Wikipedia
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Dracula is a horror novel with gothic elements written in 1897 by the Irish author Bram Stoker, told through the letters, journals and forms of correspondence, of a group of individuals and their experiences with Count Dracula.

Prior to 2022, Stoker's novel itself had only a small rarelit fandom, but through Dracula Daily, had a resurgence, especially on Tumblr.

The novel has been the inspiration for several dozen stage, screen, and print adaptations and is generally considered to have either established or popularized a number of the tropes common in vampire literature.

Popular activities in online Dracula fandom include fanfiction, fanart and group readthroughs/liveblogging of the novel.

Canon

The novel starts when Jonathan Harker, a solicitor, travels to Transylvania to finish Count Dracula's purchase of a house in Britain, but ends up imprisoned in Dracula's castle. Dracula moves from Austria-Hungary to Britain, where he starts preying on Lucy Westenra. When she falls ill from him drinking her blood, her three suitors Arthur Holmwood, Jack Seward and Quincey Morris, together with professor Abraham Van Helsing, try to save her, but fail. Lucy gets resurrected as a vampire and ends up killed by the heroes. Then they unite with Jonathan and his wife Mina Harker, together slowly uncover that Dracula killed Lucy and is a vampire, and, after attempting to turn Mina into a vampire, he gets chased by them back to Transylvania and killed there.

Characters

Fandom

History

Earlier fannish activities for both the book and the adaptations were often centered around fan clubs like The Dracula Society and included fan discussions, watching movies together and fan tourism.

The history of transformative fandom built around the novel in the Internet can be roughly divided into several waves defined by the time and websites it took place on. On of the earliest spikes of fannish interest happened on Livejournal in the mid-to-late 2000s and is associated with such communities as dracula1897. An archive for Dracula fanworks from that period exists on livejournal at Whitby Library. In comparison with the later fannish waves, the fandom of that time was somewhat more open to revisionist approaches, such as grittier characterizations of the characters, more critical perception of the novel (for example, one of moderators of dracula1897 community didn't even like the book), sexualizing Dracula or portraying him as Vlad the Impaler or shipping Dracula/Mina. Influences of the 1992 movie were more noticeable, as some comments in dracula1897 lj or fanon interpretations like drug addict!Seward indicate. The fans active at that time include Assimbya, Lady Bedivere, Dracschick, Bwinter. Majority of fanfiction outside livejournal was published on fanfiction.net and tended to focus on vampire characters.

In the early 2010s the Dracula fandom started to take shape on Tumblr, which has become the main site for the book-based transformative fandom. During that time, the fandom acquired certain characteristics that have defined it ever since, such as the focus on the human characters of the novel, the interpretation of the book as a trauma narrative and the critical perception of Dracula adaptations and scholarship. The fans associated with that period include Assimbya, forthegothicheroine, a-tundra-toadstool, raoul-daae, skazka. From then on, most Dracula fanfics have been mostly posted on AO3.

In the early 2020s fannish activity around the book intensified on Tumblr and Discord, which led to appearance of many new creators such as crepuscol, vanhelsingenthusiast, dracupa, gellavonhamster, InBlackwoods, CatWingsAthena, uselesstwinkharker, trash-eating-demon. A somewhat more lighthearted approach to the novel than before or after and popularity of the Dracula/Van Helsing pairing were specific for this period. A post made by one of the fans from that period, trupowieszcz, led to the Dracula Daily phenomenon.

In 2022, Dracula Daily (DD) led to explosion of fan interest previously unprecedented in the Dracula fandom. While the peak of it took place in 2022-2023, in 2024 the fandom still stays more active than it was prior to DD. The popular creators of this period include dathen, see-arcane, bluecatwriter, animate-mush, yallemagne, astrangergivingthestrangewelcome, ibrithir-was-here, mayhemchicken. This era is characterized by the huge popularity of Jonathan Harker, many prominent fans being Christians and even more intense hostility towards Dracula adaptations than before. Some smaller particularities include Seward/Van Helsing shipping, giving characters (especially Jonathan) latent supernatural powers and fanfiction going further to the extremes with both angst and fluff than prior works.

Besides Tumblr, DD fans gather in Discord servers, such as the server of Re: Dracula podcast or the one for The League of Extraordinary Gentlefolk fancomic.

Before Dracula Daily, Dracula fics were often requested and written for Yuletide. They have been popular and widely recced.

Shipping

Fanworks

Perception prior to Dracula Daily

Fanfiction for Dracula tended towards darkfic, appropriate enough for a work of horror, though there can also be a focus on angst and backstory. Dracula/Jonathan is a popular slash pairing, with stories often taking place as missing scenes during the period of Jonathan's imprisonment in Dracula's castle. Examples of such stories include Wake to Reason by skazka and Horror of the Mind by Serra-Of-Many-Names. Due to the sexually predatory undertones of Dracula's attacks in the novel, there is a fair amount of noncon centered on the Dracula/Jonathan pairing, as well as on Dracula/Mina (such as No Touch of Pity by Assimbya) and Dracula/Lucy (such as The Dream Journal of Lucy Westenra by RobberBaroness). Stories exploring these relationships often feature dreamlike narratives and symbolism, casting doubts in the characters' minds about what is or is not really happening. Many Renfield-centric works, such as He Forgot by The Smiling Shadow are also dark explorations of his relationship with Dracula. A few of these, including astolat's a mind overbone give this relationship a sexual element, though this is less common.

Prequel works may explore Lucy's three suitors and their adventures, or Mina and Lucy's relationship. Such stories can be fluff about friendship, or romances (especially Mina/Lucy). Much of ladybedivere's work, including Snapshots of Home, develops backstories for the main protagonists and shows them in domestic settings, before Dracula interfered with their lives.

Sequel works, on the other hand, tend to be sadder in tone, as the cast of survivors struggles to deal with their trauma and loss. Stories like ladybedivere's Fine and Mattador's Nom Omnis Moriar depict characters working through the emotional ramifications of the novel's events. Other stories go even further and show one of the survivors (often Mina or her son Quincey) discovering that they are becoming vampires or acquiring magical traits, despite Dracula's destruction- or else that Dracula is still alive after all. Assimbya's To Burn the Castle Down and havocthecat's For the Dead Travel Fast explore such scenarios.

A fair amount of fanart consists of solitary character portraits.

Perception during and after Dracula Daily

Many post-DD fanworks explore suffering and trauma of various characters, eg. Jonathan's PTSD from his stay at the Dracula's castle, Mina's trauma from being attacked by Dracula and almost turned into a vampire, suitors' and Mina's grief for Lucy, Lucy's agonizing illness and death.

A lot of focus is on the friendship and love between the vampire hunters, who are nicknamed "Crew of Light" by the fandom. Jonathan/Mina is the most popular pairing, but various combinations between the three suitors and Seward/Helsing have also grown in popularity in comparison to the prior times.

Mina/Lucy is a well-liked pairing too, though less written about than before. Dracula/Jonathan continues to be popular, but the recent fics for it tend to be darker.

There is a small number of Seward/Renfield works.

Polyamory is a very popular trope, sometimes encompassing the whole Crew (also referred to as the "Polycule") or sometimes everyone but Van Helsing.

Darkfics focus on Dracula's predations and often explore the themes of abuse and rape. In comparison with the pre-DD works, the newer fics feature dreamlike atmosphere less often, instead focusing on the suffering of victims and the use of abuse techniques like gaslighting.

Another common scenario for darkfics is some character, usually Mina or Jonathan, turning into a vampire. Sometimes Mina's turning leads to Jonathan killing the rest of the hunters to stop them from killing her.

The common genres for post-DD fics are hurt/comfort and whump.

Humor and crack are rare.

A genre specific for Dracula Daily is time-loop fic, inspired by comparisons of fans going through the second and third DD runs with characters gone through time-loops, which led to many memes and some fanworks.

AUs often have characters who died in the novel survive, especially Quincey Morris. Setting-changing and modern AUs are still rare. Crossovers with other works, especially these popular in the gothlit fandom, are quite common.

Like in many fandoms, it's common to headcanon characters as queer, POC or autistic, though in the Dracula Daily fandom it has an additional layer of pushing against the perception of Dracula as a conservative novel. A lot of emphasis in put on portraying the Crew as an example of modern views and healthy relationships, with Dracula/vampires being the opposite.

Post-DD artworks often show scenes from the book, portray characters together or separately (for example, there are a lot of depictions of the Crew of Light together) or illustrate jokes and memes specific for Dracula Daily. A lot of art has lighthearted style and/or tone; there is less dark art than dark fics in the fandom, and Gothic styles and themes are quite rare in comparison with professional Dracula illustrations.

While most characters are not given detailed descriptions in the novel, they often have similar designs in arts by different artists: Jack is black-haired, clean-shaven, bespectacled and nerdy-looking; Quincey is dark-haired, often a POC, has facial hair and generally is very dashing; Arthur is usually blond; Lucy is usually blonde and often wears pink clothes; Mina is usually brunette and often a POC.

Discussion and Read-throughs

The format of the novel, which consists of dated journal entries, letters, and other documents, has lent itself well to group read-throughs by fans. The Dracula1897 community on livejournal, started by elettaria and eye-of-a-cat, read through the novel together between May and November 2006, following the pace and sequence of the dates given in the text, rather than the order in which Bram Stoker chooses to tell the story. This community attracted many new readers who had never been exposed to the novel before, and gave fans a new experience of the text. Rich and complex discussions of the text were sparked off in comments to the community.

This read-through set off a trend, and a number of sites since have experimented with similar hypertext readings of the novel. In May 2013, tumblr user a-tundra-toadstool began similarly reading the book according to its chronology, and liveblogging a combination of quotes, observations, and background material as they do so.

Meta and discussion of the story and characters is common in the fandom. Fans often discuss the merits or faults of various adaptations of the story, or express their opinions on the analyses of the novel published by literary critics such as Leslie Klinger, Leonard Wolf, and Elizabeth Miller. Questions of sexuality and romance can be contentious issues in the fandom, as some fans champion the characterization of Dracula as a romantic and sexually liberating hero popularized by films such as Coppola's Bram Stoker's Dracula, and others argue that Stoker depicts Dracula as as an abuser and his attacks on the protagonists as coded or metaphorical sexual assaults.[1] Discussions of issues of sexism, racism, and homophobia within the novel and its adaptations are also common.

Tumblr user siderealscion enthused about the positive atmosphere of Dracula fandom:

no but im serious in addition to being unreasonably smart the dracula fandom is chill as hell the only drama i’ve ever seen is that every few months like clockwork somebody makes a nasty comment about lucy in the tags and they get politely and eloquently refuted through a dozen or so reblogs in the span of a few days

if i remember correctly one of them ended with “we should all have tea sometime” like good lord we’re civil as fuck

(and there’s so few of us we agree on almost everything which is nice ngl)

 [2]

Tumblr Resurgence 2022

Starting on the 3rd May, a site named Dracula Daily began to send out emails to subscribers of journal entries corresponding to the date in which they were written in-canon. This began to spread around Tumblr, eventually leading to it trending Number 1. on the site, beating the release of Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, and the reveal of the next Doctor.[3]

As a result, a resurgence of fanworks, discussions, and memes arose on the site. At first humorous and lighthearted, Dracula Daily took a more serious turn the further into the novel, which many readers were surprised to find a genuinely compelling horror story. Dracula Daily was a huge success that defined the shape of Dracula fandom in the early 2020s and became a yearly Tumblr tradition.

Influence

DD lead to popularization of other works of the 19th century literature, especially Gothic ones like Frankenstein, The Picture of Dorian Gray, The Woman in White, but also other genre fiction from this period such as Sherlock Holmes stories, Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Seas and The Invisible Man. Substacks similar to DD and intended for portional reading in similar manner were created for many of these works (for example, Whale Weekly, Dorian Gray Weekly, Letters from Watson etc.) It's not uncommon for creators who are mainly Dracula fans to dabble in fandoms for these other works, creating crossovers with Dracula and separate fanworks for these stories too, and while the gothlit fandom existed on Tumblr prior to DD, currently Dracula fans play a big role in it.

Dracula Daily, and in particular widespread dissatisfaction with Dracula adaptations it caused, has led to creation of several professional works deemed more "accurate" by the fandom, as well as fannish works of types different from the usual meta/fanfiction/fanart. Re: Dracula podcast one of the most popular of such works, has been the topic of much discussion during the Dracula Daily 2023 run. The League of Extraordinary Gentlefolk, fancomic drawn by mayhemchicken and cowritten by several gothlit fans, is a crossover of many of books popular in the gothlit fandom but is focused primarily on the Dracula cast.

Other works inspired by Dracula Daily include:

  • Dracula Daily book by Matt Kirkland, which is Dracula text arranged chronologically and annotated by comments, memes, arts and meta made by Tumblr users during the DD 2022 run
  • Vampyres by C.R. Kane, a Jonathan-centric novel based on Dracula and several other classic vampire stories
  • The Holmwood Foundation podcast by Fio Trethewey and Georgia Cook
  • What Manner of Man by St John Starling, a queer gothic romance novel, original work inspired by the first part of Dracula. The first draft was published online in a Substack similar to Dracula Daily

Adaptations

see also Dracula (films)

Fandoms of various sizes exist for some of the more popular adaptations. The largest Dracula fandoms are:

Other Dracula-themed movies and series that have or used to have fandoms include:

Since Dracula is out of copyright, a large number of transformative works exploring various aspects of the story have been published outside of online fandom.

  • Some retellings take a revisionist approach, portraying Count Dracula, the novel's villain, as more sympathetic, and the heroes as less heroic. The Dracula Tape by Fred Saberhagan and Dracula the Un-Dead[4] by Dacre Stoker and Ian Holt are two of the most famous works of this type. Such books often pair Dracula with Mina (Dracula in Love by Karen Essex, Dracula, My Love by Syrie James) or Jonathan (A Delicious Descent by Amanda Meuwissen, El otro Dracula by Tony Mark)
  • Other retellings, like iDrakula by Bekka Black, Thrall by Avon Gale and The Madness by Dawn Kurtagich, set the novel during the modern period
  • It's not uncommon for Dracula fiction to focus on a single character from the novel:
    • Dracula (I, Dracula by D.S. Crowe, Incarnadine, Volume One: The True Memoirs of Count Dracula by R.H. Greene)
    • Renfield (The Book of Renfield: A Gospel of Dracula by Tim Lucas, Renfield: Slave of Dracula by Barbara Hambly, Visitor in Lunacy by Stephen Curran)
    • Lucy (Lucy Undying by Kiersten White, Reluctant Immortals by Gwendolyn Kiste, Now Comes the Mist by Julie C. Dao)
    • Mina (The Letters of Mina Harker by Dodie Bellamy, Mina Harker: The Curse of the Vampire by Louise Lake)
    • Van Helsing (The Many Faces of Van Helsing anthology, Terovolas by Edward M. Erdelac)
    • Brides (A Dowry of Blood by S.T. Gibson, The Deathless Girls by Kiran Millwood Hargrave)
    • or even the crew of the Demeter (The Route of Ice and Salt by José Luis Zárate, Dracula's Demeter by Doug Lamoreux)
  • A lot of published stories have author's original characters fight Dracula (The Historian by Elizabeth Kostova, The Tomb of Dracula Marvel comic, The Carpathian Assignment by Chip Wagar)
  • Some books are crossovers where fictional characters of other authors or real historical figures encounter Dracula (Night in the Lonesome October by Roger Zelazny, Neither Hyde Nor Hair by J.R. Rain).
    • In particular, Kim Newman's book series Anno Dracula, one of the most famous Dracula pastiches, functions as an extended Alternate Universe crossover fic, exploring a world where Count Dracula forces Queen Victoria to marry him and becomes the ruler of England. The series is filled with cameo appearances from both fictional characters and historical figures.
    • Several Sherlock Holmes books are crossovers with Dracula (Sherlock Holmes Vs. Dracula by Loren D. Estleman, Sherlock Holmes and Count Dracula: The First of The Classified Dossier Series by Christian Klaver, Sherlock Holmes vs. Dracula by Ian Edginton, Sherlock Holmes and the Plague of Dracula by Stephen Seitz)

Characters from Dracula also make appearances in the texts of a number of other popular fandoms, including Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Hellsing, The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, Van Helsing, Penny Dreadful and Hotel Transylvania.

Resources

  • The livejournal community draculasfans, for discussion of the novel and its adaptations.
  • The Dracula (novel) section on AO3, with over 600 stories.
  • Much discussion and meta also takes place amongst users on tumblr.

Example Fanworks

See Dracula Daily for more example fanworks

Fiction

  • Bridge of Dreams/Closer Than Ever/Sword of Time by Mme Bahorel - a series of three prequel stories exploring a Jack/Arthur pairing.
  • Sympathy of Wolves by GreenSpine - a popular and well-recommended character piece about Dracula's wives.
  • Sea of Wonders by sophiahelix - story from Dracula's point of view, showing his feelings towards Jonathan and Mina. Assimbya said: "I love the way Dracula’s thought process is written here, so foreign, so inhuman - the vivid intensity of his feelings is overwhelming."[5]
  • Butterfly Dreams by Rhyte - a sequel which moves between flashbacks of Jonathan's time at Dracula's castle, and his haunted life with Mina years after Dracula's death.
  • Sisters of the Night by seriousfic - a popular Mina/Lucy fic
  • Watered with Blood by RobberBaroness - baroness-sabena on tumblr called it "Dracula retold (gorgeously) as Southern Gothic" [6]
  • Dissonance by Assimbya - a reinterpretation of the blood exchange scene between Mina and Dracula, incorporating suggestions from literary criticism. a-tundra-toadstool said "because writing fic that’s addressing academic criticism that’s addressing the work of fiction you’re writing fic about is pretty much what I want from fandom"[7]

Art

Meta

Fanzines

Fan Clubs

References

  1. ^ Examples of such discussions include the Love Story or Not? thread which took place on the discussion forums of fanfiction.net in 2009.
  2. ^ Tumblr post by siderealscion., Archived version. Posted 3 September 2013.
  3. ^ Dracula Daily number one trending on Tumblr, Archived version. Screenshot of tumblr trending board saved at Know Your Meme. Posted May 11, 2022. Accessed May 13, 2022
  4. ^ An "official" sequel authorized by the Stoker family and co-written by Bram Stoker's great-grandnephew Dacre Stoker
  5. ^ Dracula Fan Fiction Recs, Archived version. Tumblr post by chthonic-cassandra. Posted 20 August 2013.
  6. ^ From a response to a call for notable fanworks, [http://baroness-sabena.tumblr.com/post/60102853585/chthonic-cassandra-call-for-fanworks Tumblr reblog by baroness-sabena |archiveurl = https://web.archive.org/web/20220703013325/https://skeletontemple.tumblr.com/post/60163811470/chthonic-cassandra-call-for-fanworks}}
  7. ^ From a response to a call for notable fanworks, reblog by a-tundra-toadstool, Archived version
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