Talk:Abraham Van Helsing

van Helsing meta, to move to page

We probably don't need all these van Helsing metas about his ethnic, linguistic, and religious background but i dug them up for people on discord so linking them here too for future use. -- previously unsigned comment added by -- Quaelegit (talk) 18:06, 17 November 2023‎

actually very relevant to Stoker's original intentions for van Helsing: he gave the guy his OWN physical description almost exactly lmao

and also his first name ("Bram" Stoker is short for Abraham)

like, i can't probably can't find the post anymore b/c animate-mush took their blog private (rip all of my daily dracula logging on fanlore 😔 ) but you can compare van Helsing's descriptions in the book with Stoker's self-description in letters and dairy entires, entire phrases line up the main difference IIRC is the nosewell here's one textual comparison lol: https://atundratoadstool.tumblr.com/post/688514267734016000/bram-is-short-for-abraham-so-is-professor-abraham

there's been a ton of tumblr posts analyzing that [is van Helsing German?] actually, it's pretty fun

long story short: Stoker's spelling & capitalization don't match conventions of ANY of the relevant places very well, but it's hilarious to try and fit it all together into coherent headcanons [edit: including "van" and how it's capitalized -- i WILL try to find the posts I saw but it'll be a while] (another one: he talks constantly about Catholicism, but the Netherlands is largely Protestant and the details he says about Catholicism are usually hilariously off base)

• https://vickyvicarious.tumblr.com/post/728119611230437377 van Helsing swearing in (incorrect) German
• https://vickyvicarious.tumblr.com/post/727549127853031424 van Helsing's relationship to faith vs. religion (mostly headcanons)
• https://www.tumblr.com/vickyvicarious/727466483965444096 a poll for Dracula Daily peep about "what religion do you think van Helsing is" -- might be some good discussionin the notes, still checking
• https://vickyvicarious.tumblr.com/post/727419560241790976 a post that explicitly contrasts van Helsing and Dracula along ethnic lines (apparently VH described explicitly as German in some earlier drafts of the novel, but that was changed/removed)
• https://vickyvicarious.tumblr.com/post/706531449287884800 a post arguing that VH didn't know shit about Dracula, and maybe not even about vampires more generally, before Seward wrote to him for help. instead he did the 19th century equivalent of a wikipedia binge
• https://vickyvicarious.tumblr.com/post/700012882376769536 van Helsing and/or Stoker also gets his French wrong
• https://abrahamvanhelsings.tumblr.com/post/726851149477625856/are-you-willing-to-tell-us-if-van-helsing-has-a a post about what the Re:Dracula podcast did for VH's accent (with commentary by a Dutch person who's a big van Helsing fan>

i know people have probably moved on from the van helsing discussion but i finally got a lead on some of the Daily Dracula discussion about it 😛

also while afaik there is no textural evidence for any of this, a lot of people like to draw various members of the Polycule as black. I think Mina and Quincy are probably most popular in this regard, but pretty sure I've seen art of all them at various times.