something i am utterly obsessed with is the physical copy of dracula that i recently purchased that has , as part of its foreword , some of the original idea notes that bram stoker had about what dracula’s vampiric powers/traits would be.
one of these is that dracula’s likeness cannot be captured in a painting , he always looks like someone else.
which only leads me to imagine a scenario in which the count lines many of his castle hallways with paintings of himself throughout the centuries but none of them look the same and none of them look like him but jonathan can’t help but notice they all somehow look eerily similar.
he brushes it off , assuming they are simply counts of generations past.
Modern vampire fiction: Vampires are scheming masterminds whose plots cannot be fathomed by mortal man.
Bram Stoker's Dracula (1897): Most people become mindless animals when they turn into vampires; Dracula is exceptional in that he retained any intelligence at all, but he's still dumb as hell, and his schemes literally only work because he's rich.
reading Dracula has permanently altered my brain. i can never see count dracula as a generic character anymore. he isn't an ooky spooky horror monster he's the old bitch that imprisoned my boy johnny in his shitass castle and killed my beloved lucy and quincey. abraham van helsing isn't synonymous with badass monster hunters he's a 50-year-old dutch doctor who talks funny. i see things and think oh wow this is just like my favorite characters from my book that was written 126 years ago.