Dracula Daily: Homoeroticism
May. 16th, 2022 03:07 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
writerkitOr just eroticism in general, really. There's the brides coming on to him-- and it's adorable that he's like "I am committed to writing everything down accurately but if I die and Mina finds this journal she might be hurt that I found the creepy vampire women attractive while I was half-asleep"; Jonathan is so in love with Mina-- there's Dracula being all "he is MINE," there's the fact that Dracula apparently undressed him and tucked him into bed...
I know people talk about this having been written because of Oscar Wilde, but the first time I read this I was a sheltered asexual middle schooler and just missed... apparently very large chunks of this book, because I do not remember the sexuality at all. (As a librarian aside, when we talk about how kids won't notice certain things in texts if they don't already know about them, this is what we mean. It all went right over my head so thoroughly I never noticed it. And a bit younger I might have put it down because I couldn't follow the surface plot. Yes, there are books that are flat-out not appropriate for kids, but for the stuff that some kids and not others might be ready for? They'll put it down if they're not.) (Also this can happen with adults as well. When Snow Lane was in all the mock Newbery discussions, a lot of people were like "it's a very gradual reveal just how messed up her family is" and then I read it and was like "No, it is blatant from the first page how messed up her family is; how are you all missing this?" But the early parts where the narration is still somewhat nonchalant about it all went completely over people's heads.)
The Count declaring "He is MINE" is going to fuel a thousand fanfics... though I've been checking AO3 since this started, and it's been a week and a half of increasingly ridiculous things, and there's not been that much of an increase in fic. Maybe we'll get more as the book gets more intense? (Yes, I know, fic takes time-- my little oneshot crossver cannot be finished and posted until we've hit the end of the Transylvania trip. But still.)
Also I think there's an excellent trans fanfic in the way Jonathan keeps trying to commune with the past ladies of the castle. "Oh, here I sit, where the maidens sat in the long ago" complete with very vivid imaginings of what it would have been like to be one of the maidens in the long ago, and his role-- at least in this part of the book-- is one that is played by the ingenue in most Gothics, right down to actually swooning into Dracula's arms in today's episode. Someone give me trans Jonathan fic!
I know people talk about this having been written because of Oscar Wilde, but the first time I read this I was a sheltered asexual middle schooler and just missed... apparently very large chunks of this book, because I do not remember the sexuality at all. (As a librarian aside, when we talk about how kids won't notice certain things in texts if they don't already know about them, this is what we mean. It all went right over my head so thoroughly I never noticed it. And a bit younger I might have put it down because I couldn't follow the surface plot. Yes, there are books that are flat-out not appropriate for kids, but for the stuff that some kids and not others might be ready for? They'll put it down if they're not.) (Also this can happen with adults as well. When Snow Lane was in all the mock Newbery discussions, a lot of people were like "it's a very gradual reveal just how messed up her family is" and then I read it and was like "No, it is blatant from the first page how messed up her family is; how are you all missing this?" But the early parts where the narration is still somewhat nonchalant about it all went completely over people's heads.)
The Count declaring "He is MINE" is going to fuel a thousand fanfics... though I've been checking AO3 since this started, and it's been a week and a half of increasingly ridiculous things, and there's not been that much of an increase in fic. Maybe we'll get more as the book gets more intense? (Yes, I know, fic takes time-- my little oneshot crossver cannot be finished and posted until we've hit the end of the Transylvania trip. But still.)
Also I think there's an excellent trans fanfic in the way Jonathan keeps trying to commune with the past ladies of the castle. "Oh, here I sit, where the maidens sat in the long ago" complete with very vivid imaginings of what it would have been like to be one of the maidens in the long ago, and his role-- at least in this part of the book-- is one that is played by the ingenue in most Gothics, right down to actually swooning into Dracula's arms in today's episode. Someone give me trans Jonathan fic!
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Date: 2022-05-20 05:51 pm (UTC)Keep in mind the enormous amount of Dracula-fic that has already been written -- it's basically a genre unto itself, in books, movies, and comics. It was huge in the 70s, and much of it was hot as hell. I've had a soft spot for this subgenre of vampire fiction since I was a teen.
Granted, it's mostly focused on Dracula himself rather than Jonathan (and the older stuff tends to be mostly cishet, because older), but the descendants of our heroes are protagonists of the modern-day Dracula comics.