Daily Dracula
May. 7th, 2022 10:18 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
writerkitOnly a few days late, I have signed up for Daily Dracula, and have now caught up, so I will be ready when we get the next email.
For the uninitiated, Daily Dracula is a real-time serialization of the novel: you get sent the various journal entries and newspapers and things in your inbox on the days they happen. Which does mean you're reading some stuff out of the order it appears in the novel, since it skips around in time a bit.
I actually have read Dracula, but I was in middle school at the time, so this will be a good refresher. As an aside, I read Dracula in middle school and liked it, read Stephen King's Danse Macabre eagerly, deliberately sought out some of the stuff he talks about there, and still kept insisting to myself that I didn't like horror until fairly recently. (Danse Macabre is also what gave me the language to move past that, incidentally-- I don't like gore and that's like 90% of modern horror movies. I adore Ghost Whisperer, and while I know some people will challenge me on that being a horror show, watch it sometime: it is 50% horror TV and 50% Hallmark movie, usually in the same episode, which I think is why it had trouble finding an audience. There are very few people like me who will enjoy it because it's both.)
Early observations: people in Dracula don't know they're in Dracula. Jonathan Harker is very aware he's on a creepy business trip full of people with weird superstitions, but he's got no reason to go "yes, obviously vampires." Similarly, continuing to go "ah, yes, this is old world nobility; of course it makes sense that the count is a little weird" as things ratchet up the creepy meter... well, I'd be wondering at the way Dracula never seems to eat after a while, but I'd probably jump to "Ah, he has an eating disorder" were I faced with that in real life.
Also Jonathan's very, very English; he can't seem to handle the existence of paprika.
For the uninitiated, Daily Dracula is a real-time serialization of the novel: you get sent the various journal entries and newspapers and things in your inbox on the days they happen. Which does mean you're reading some stuff out of the order it appears in the novel, since it skips around in time a bit.
I actually have read Dracula, but I was in middle school at the time, so this will be a good refresher. As an aside, I read Dracula in middle school and liked it, read Stephen King's Danse Macabre eagerly, deliberately sought out some of the stuff he talks about there, and still kept insisting to myself that I didn't like horror until fairly recently. (Danse Macabre is also what gave me the language to move past that, incidentally-- I don't like gore and that's like 90% of modern horror movies. I adore Ghost Whisperer, and while I know some people will challenge me on that being a horror show, watch it sometime: it is 50% horror TV and 50% Hallmark movie, usually in the same episode, which I think is why it had trouble finding an audience. There are very few people like me who will enjoy it because it's both.)
Early observations: people in Dracula don't know they're in Dracula. Jonathan Harker is very aware he's on a creepy business trip full of people with weird superstitions, but he's got no reason to go "yes, obviously vampires." Similarly, continuing to go "ah, yes, this is old world nobility; of course it makes sense that the count is a little weird" as things ratchet up the creepy meter... well, I'd be wondering at the way Dracula never seems to eat after a while, but I'd probably jump to "Ah, he has an eating disorder" were I faced with that in real life.
Also Jonathan's very, very English; he can't seem to handle the existence of paprika.
