[ SECRET POST #3588 ]

[case]

⌈ Secret Post #3588 ⌋

Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.

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Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 02 pages, 62 secrets from Secret Submission Post #513.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 0 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 0 - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.

Comments

Re: Book club - DRACULA discussion post!

[diet_poison]

The first thing that strikes me about the book was the Victorian-era gender politics...especially in the 2nd half of the book where it actively puts Mina in danger (and they STILL try to exclude her "for her protection."

OMG, yes. Especially since you could kinda see it coming, when they started to exclude her and she almost immediately started to show signs of vampire attack, but didn't want to confide in them because they were ~so busy and also because she felt these barriers of communication (iirc she directly related her reasoning for not sharing with their secrecy about plans, even if that doesn't make sense).

though, funny enough, he seems to be written as youthful and not strong by masculine standards of the day.

Maybe that's why he appealed to me a little more than the other young male leads :P (though the real reason probably has to do more with reading his perspective in Dracula's castle which just made him more interesting overall, plus my love of his relationship with Mina)

such as anything to do with running water.

This is super interesting to me because while I haven't seen this in other vampire lit I've read (admittedly not very many books, but there've been a few) but I HAVE seen it in more than one other fantasy books with other villainous creatures, and I have to wonder if it was borrowed from vampire lore. In The Wheel of Time, Shadowspawn (various evil creatures spawned from the lands of the Big Bad, many inspired by various evil creature tropes) either cannot cross running water or will do so only reluctantly and need to be driven by more powerful creatures or human leaders. WoT does have a vampire-inspired creature, the Dragkhar, which is sort of like a cross between a vampire and a Dementor, but they can fly so I'm not sure the running water rule applies to them. The Abhorsen trilogy by Garth Nix involves the dead, basically zombies (dead corpses raised by necromancers that behave in many ways like zombies but aren't infectuous) and they are unable to cross running water. Tangent, sorry! Just think it's interesting.

But that actually fits with the legends -- that silver or steel harm vampires just as they might werewolves.

So I've heard the silver thing, for vamps and werewolves, but that didn't seem to apply here. Dracula himself was holding a silver...something (a lamp I think?) at the beginning of the book. But maybe it only counts if it enters their body (i.e. a silver knife) and doesn't harm their skin? Hm.

but it's obvious that Stoker was using her to push back against things like the New Woman movement and newfangled ideas about feminism.

I guess I haven't read enough Victorian literature to know if this was different genderwise than most other Victorian novels; it didn't occur to me that it might be other than normal lol. I guess it was pretty preachy about its gender essentialism though. :/

I wish they'd done more with Quincy but I found Arthur to be really pretty boring, so I didn't care as much about him. tbh I found Seward boring too but his journals were still interesting inasmuch as they pertained to Renfield. He and Arthur pretty much didn't have any unique character development to me though, except Seward's relationship with Van Helsing.

Agree completely about lack of buildup to Quincey's death. :(

And Van Helsing's monologues reminded me of Shakespeare lol. I've read enough in school to be familiar with the monologue that said little with many words. I don't remember very many specific quotes though (maybe not any...) so I didn't pick up on the actual references lol.