Topic: Super Waffle's book chat / Gundam discussion

[DoctaMario]

I didn't like Dracula when I first read it, but now it's one of my favorite books. In a way, it's like the first reality show. It's very voyeuristic in the sense that everything you learn is by way of reading the characters' diaries and letters. I'm not sure if it was the first book to be written that way, but it was a brilliant idea on Stoker's part.

I also liked the parallels that Coppola drew in his movie of Mina possibly being a reincarnation of Elizabetha.

Has anyone read the sequel, "Dracula The UnDead?" I bought it for a dollar somewhere while I was on tour and haven't read it yet. It was written by Stoker's grand nephew or something. I don't know if it's a good book or not, but I'm kind of looking forward to delving into it.

[The Puritan]

Has anyone read the sequel, "Dracula The UnDead?" I bought it for a dollar somewhere while I was on tour and haven't read it yet. It was written by Stoker's grand nephew or something. I don't know if it's a good book or not, but I'm kind of looking forward to delving into it.

I won't go into detail, but for a book that claimed to be the "true sequel"? It was... between mediocre and rather bad. 

The only thing of note about it was the revelation that in Bram Stoker's notes for the first novel, he originally intended for the castle to crumble after Dracula's defeat.

Yes, you read that right. Crumble.

[X]

This book is nightmarishly boring (mem.: Don't read it again after you finish it once)"? 

Of course it is. Bram Stoker wrote Dracula at a time when there was no expectations of fast-paced plots or extreme suspense. Those are the norms of today and back in the 1800s' it was not unusual to have such a 'boring' book like that to be published. Modern novelization is much, much different then it was back in the day.

[Super Waffle]

I was not alone. The room was the same, unchanged in any way since I came into it. I could see along the floor, in the brilliant moonlight, my own footsteps marked where I had disturbed the long accumulation of dust. In the moonlight opposite me were three young women, ladies by their dress and manner. I thought at the time that I must be dreaming when I saw them, they threw no shadow on the floor. They came close to me, and looked at me for some time, and then whispered together. Two were dark, and had high aquiline noses, like the Count, and great dark, piercing eyes, that seemed to be almost red when contrasted with the pale yellow moon. The other was fair, as fair as can be, with great masses of golden hair and eyes like pale sapphires. I seemed somehow to know her face, and to know it in connection with some dreamy fear, but I could not recollect at the moment how or where. All three had brilliant white teeth that shone like pearls against the ruby of their voluptuous lips. There was something about them that made me uneasy, some longing and at the same time some deadly fear. I felt in my heart a wicked, burning desire that they would kiss me with those red lips.It is not good to note this down, lest some day it should meet Mina's eyes and cause her pain, but it is the truth. They whispered together, and then they all three laughed, such a silvery, musical laugh, but as hard as though the sound never could have come through the softness of human lips. It was like the intolerable, tingling sweetness of waterglasses when played on by a cunning hand. The fair girl shook her head coquettishly, and the other two urged her on.

One said, "Go on! You are first, and we shall follow. Yours' is the right to begin."

The other added, "He is young and strong. There are kisses for us all."

I lay quiet, looking out from under my eyelashes in an agony of delightful anticipation. The fair girl advanced and bent over me till I could feel the movement of her breath upon me. Sweet it was in one sense, honey-sweet, and sent the same tingling through the nerves as her voice, but with a bitter underlying the sweet, a bitter offensiveness, as one smells in blood.

I was afraid to raise my eyelids, but looked out and saw perfectly under the lashes. The girl went on her knees, and bent over me, simply gloating. There was a deliberate voluptuousness which was both thrilling and repulsive, and as she arched her neck she actually licked her lips like an animal, till I could see in the moonlight the moisture shining on the scarlet lips and on the red tongue as it lapped the white sharp teeth. Lower and lower went her head as the lips went below the range of my mouth and chin and seemed to fasten on my throat. Then she paused, and I could hear the churning sound of her tongue as it licked her teeth and lips, and I could feel the hot breath on my neck. Then the skin of my throat began to tingle as one's flesh does when the hand that is to tickle it approaches nearer, nearer. I could feel the soft, shivering touch of the lips on the super sensitive skin of my throat, and the hard dents of two sharp teeth, just touching and pausing there. I closed my eyes in languorous ecstasy and waited, waited with beating heart.

ooo, this is getting spicy.

I wonder how I can incorporate Maria/Angela/Charlotte/Pachislot Sypha/Shanoa into this.

[Super Waffle]

oh god Ratty they're talking about the sailor.

More shenanigans with the wives plz.


edit:  "oh noes Lucy went skimping down the road in her nighties again, I have to protect her chastity and make sure nobody finds out about this and hide all the evidence so rumors don't break out."

then why are you writing it down?


edit 2:  Hmm, I wonder if Lucy is going to survive.

edit 3:  Guess not.

[Ratty]

oh god Ratty they're talking about the sailor.

More shenanigans with the wives plz.


edit:  "oh noes Lucy went skimping down the road in her nighties again, I have to protect her chastity and make sure nobody finds out of this and hide all the evidence so rumors don't break out."

then why are you writing it down?


edit 2:  Hmm, I wonder if Lucy is going to survive.

edit 3:  Guess not.

Yeah Vamp-Lucy is one of the few real highlights after the opening chapters with Jonathan in the Castle until the climax iirc. Thankfully it's not that long a book. Influential serialized penny dreadful "Varney the Vampire or the Feast of Blood" was 109 chapters long!

I think Bram Stoker might have had his eye on a play adaptation of the story from the start. As many here know in his day job he was manager of a playhouse and assistant to a famous actor. He did write a play version of Dracula "cobbled together to ensure his dramatic copyright." as Ray Olson from Booklist put it. The prologue to this Stoker script was published in "The Mammoth Book of Dracula". ( http://www.amazon.com/Mammoth-Book-Dracula-Stephen-Jones/dp/B006J43JUE ) Maybe he was planning on turning his story into a proper play but it became so popular others did it for him?

[Super Waffle]

That's right, Anthony Hopkins.  It's not like that bat Quincey saw on the windowsill could mean anything important.  Dracula couldn't possibly be spying on you when you just finished talking about how he can disguise himself as a bat.

God dammit when I wrote that one story where Alucard is hilariously dense and can't quite figure out what's going on I did it as a joke.  I didn't realize it was actually an authentic Victorian era in-character thing.  They should have just called this book Bram Stoker's Really Really Dumb Motherfuckers.

edit: why don't they just ask Renfield what his blatantly obvious connection to Dracula is

edit 2:

[Ratty]

Yeah that's one of the most disturbing things about how Dracula is constantly sexualized and played as a romantic character. For my sanity I have to assume it's because more people are familiar with the Bela Lugosi version than the original, because in the actual book he's basically a rapist. Very few adaptations keep that primal, unpleasant, evil and violent aspect of the character.

[Tanatra]

One must keep in mind that Dracula was never regarded as a classic until it became popularized by Nosferatu (which essentially ripped it off.) A lot of comments in this topic about the dialogue and story being drawn out (despite the story not even being all that long) are spot-on, and all of the characters are rather flat as well, not to mention that the ending is anti-climatic. All of the scenes with the female vampires were great though.

[Super Waffle]

but it seemed as though corruption had become itself corrupt.

Kinky.

[Beaumont_Belmont]

One must keep in mind that Dracula was never regarded as a classic until it became popularized by Nosferatu (which essentially ripped it off.) A lot of comments in this topic about the dialogue and story being drawn out (despite the story not even being all that long) are spot-on, and all of the characters are rather flat as well, not to mention that the ending is anti-climatic. All of the scenes with the female vampires were great though.

This is sort of...ill-informed.
Nosferatu didn't rip off Dracula, it flat-out adapted it (Prana Films, the company that made it, sort of ripped off Bram Stoker's widow, but that's not the same thing). Nosferatu got brushed under the rug when Stoker's widow threw a fit, although there were plenty of copies out there. But the novel Dracula has never been out of print. Nope. Not even in those years between 1897 and the release of Nosferatu. So Stoker must have tapped into something.
I personally agree with Clive Barker's assessment of it- "It's a first rate late 19th-Century trashy novel". I think those reading it often go in with the wrong expectations.

[Tanatra]

This is sort of...ill-informed.
Nosferatu didn't rip off Dracula, it flat-out adapted it (Prana Films, the company that made it, sort of ripped off Bram Stoker's widow, but that's not the same thing). Nosferatu got brushed under the rug when Stoker's widow threw a fit, although there were plenty of copies out there. But the novel Dracula has never been out of print. Nope. Not even in those years between 1897 and the release of Nosferatu. So Stoker must have tapped into something.
I personally agree with Clive Barker's assessment of it- "It's a first rate late 19th-Century trashy novel". I think those reading it often go in with the wrong expectations.

Um, where in my post did I say that it went out of print? And last I checked, adapting a story without giving credit to the author (or in this case, the author's estate) qualifies as a rip-off.

[Ratty]

I don't know if the book's never been out of print (I know it hasn't since the success of the 1931 Lugosi film, 19 years after Stoker's death) but if it hasn't it didn't make Stoker a lot of money since the year he died he had to ask for a compassionate grant to live on ( http://www.todayinliterature.com/stories.asp?Event_Date=4/20/1912 ) I think the controversy over Nosferatu did raise the profile of the novel a lot and without it we almost certainly wouldn't have our beloved Count as we know him today.

[Beaumont_Belmont]

Um, where in my post did I say that it went out of print? And last I checked, adapting a story without giving credit to the author (or in this case, the author's estate) qualifies as a rip-off.

I didn't say you said that. I said that as an attestation to the novel's long-term popularity. And the print of Nosferatu that I own does say, on the second title card "From the novel by Bram Stoker", although since this particular print also refers to Dracula simply as "Count Dracula" rather than "Count Orlock", I can't really state if the original print carried that.

However, I really think we're lending a bit too much credibility to the idea that controversy over Murnau's Nosferatu somehow kept the book in greater circulation. There was no internet at the time and I doubt that copyright disputes were commonly front-page news. The only source the average person would likely have to learn about this would be film-fan magazines like PhotoPlay. The John Balderston-Hamilton Deane play that was adapted into the 1931 film was independently popular in its own right with people that couldn't care less about an international copyright tiff.

One thing to note about the novel is that it spoke to a lot of the fears of the Victorian era that don't resonate as strongly with us today. We don't have the same hang ups about sex and foreigners (most of us), so Dracula obviously isn't going to mean the same things to us if it means anything at all.

[Super Waffle]

And so you, like the others, would play your brains against mine. You would help these men to hunt me and frustrate me in my design! You know now, and they know in part already, and will know in full before long, what it is to cross my path. They should have kept their energies for use closer to home. Whilst they played wits against me, against me who commanded nations, and intrigued for them, and fought for them, hundreds of years before they were born, I was countermining them. And you, their best beloved one, are now to me, flesh of my flesh, blood of my blood, kin of my kin, my bountiful wine-press for a while, and shall be later on my companion and my helper. You shall be avenged in turn, for not one of them but shall minister to your needs. But as yet you are to be punished for what you have done. You have aided in thwarting me. Now you shall come to my call. When my brain says "Come!" to you, you shall cross land or sea to do my bidding. And to that end this!

just like Sophia.


p.s.: okay yeah that whole hey-let's-hypnotize-Mina-to-figure-out-he's-on-a-boat thing was a giant ass pull.

p.p.s.:  Well that book wasn't too bad once you get past the pacing issues and all the really stupid people.  It was kind of weird how the AMURRIKUH guy basically became the main character in the last few pages, though.