#and Dracula isn't nearly as pointy as he make him out to be (bar the ears)

[see-arcane]

I finished Dracula recently, and Mina says that (the young-looking) Dracula stalking a girl in London has very red lips, which reminds me that Jonathan said that the three vampire women have red lips. Jonathan had never described Dracula having red lips as far as I recall. Does this mean that their lips get red only if they've been feeding often? I guess that'd explain why the child-drinking women were young looking while Dracula was always old in Transylvania (minus the time Jonathan found him with (his?) blood and hit him with a shovel)? Sorry if the answers are obvious

He does have red lips all the way through though! This is what Jonathan puts down about him on the first night at the castle:

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.

This could mean he'd had a quick sip of a victim beforehand and maybe his lips paled out later and Jonathan didn't mention it, but I think it suggests that overall Dracula's kind of vampirism brings blood up to the lips for some reason. It's a similar situation when Lucy finally dies, with her normal unhealthy pallor suddenly turning rosy and 'lively' after death. It weirdly de-ghastly's people for some reason.

Alternatively, Dracula has a favorite lip lacquer applied (Artful Artery by Maybelline) and we just never saw that scene because Bramothy had to cut it. I guess we'll never know.

#honestly Dracula is one of a couple characters that audiences (including us Dracula Dailiers) kind of automatically redesign #Lucy gets full blonde or redhead despite her getting described as having sunny/shiny and then dark hair #Jack gets turned into a nerdy stringbean despite being described as having a strong jaw and a right hook powerful enough to stagger Renfiel #*Renfield #who also gets wildly varying designs despite being physically strong enough to tear out a window and wrestle Dracula for a minute #and Dracula isn't nearly as pointy as he make him out to be (bar the ears) #dude's got a lantern jaw to go with the rosy lips #I love all the variety of new looks we put together for the characters #but sometimes the original descriptions kind of get eaten by a pile of reduxes and redesigns #dracula #dracula daily