I Truly Can't Empathize With People Who Find Seward Attractive. I Can Barely Stand To Read His Entries

I truly can't empathize with people who find Seward attractive. I can barely stand to read his entries and today is a very good example of why.

HEY. HEY MINA. HEY. COULD YOU ABIDE GARLIC BEFORE????? OR NAH???? HEY. HEY MINA THIS IS IMPORTANT. HEY.

Has anyone developed any resources to help with writing Dracula stories? A list of places such as where Lucy's house in London is (just one example)? A calendar that briefly tracks what happens when? Other cool stuff?

As is typical of me I bailed three days before the end of dd because I didn't want it to be over. 😅

Tonight I caught up and I'm mad at myself bc I missed the responses in real time. Oh well. I'll read it all now I guess.

Can I just express that both my favorite blorbos DIED gtofugiygtoktgk

Ugh.

I hope a lot of y'all are going to read Frankenstein. Is that the one most people intend to move on to next? Or Moby Dick? Or another?

I hope enough people choose the same one to keep a community feel here at Tumblr University.

Train obsessions in Dracula. Hmm.

I think for many of us, Dracula and Mina's interest in trains seems a little odd. Maybe cute. Maybe surprisingly relatable to some who have their own hyper fixations.

I think it's more than that and I would be surprised if I'm the first to come up with this. Trains were world-changing technology in the latter half of the 19th century. In fact, Dracula as a story was only conceivable because of trains. In Jane Austen's time, there was no railway connecting British solicitors to the darkest reaches of the Carpathian mountains. Trains make Dracula's invasion of England possible.

So...why Mina? Was Stoker trying to provide balance somehow? Like, he didn't want to have the message be "trains bad, abolish trains" so he had the beloved Mina be into them and the Crew of Light use them to reach Dracula and defeat him (no spoiler, I'm guessing). Is there more to it?

Trains in Dracula represent the good and the bad of modernity. Civilization makes trains which reach too far into the land of the Other and endanger civilization. But then civilization, personified by the Crew, uses trains to bring civilization to victory.

I'm not sure Stoker knows what he wants to say, given all of this.

Thoughts?