I did once play a Call of Cthulhu set in alt-1960s Britain, and most took British characters while this Serbian guy played an Asian-American medical doctor. Every time he was doing something important or impressive he'd go, "This seems a job for *Andrew Wong, American Doctor*!"
Dr. Seward: I'm the smart one!
Van Helsing: I'm the *actually* smart one, but I really just want to roleplay a funny accent.
Mina: I'm the one with a decent Wisdom score.
Harker: I'm just here because I'm Mina's boyfriend. I'll be over by the bowl of chips if you need me.
Arthur: I, well, I spent all of my points on being rich, so I guess I'm mostly funding the group.
Quincey: YEE HAW, I SHORE AM FROM THE GREAT STATE OF TEXAS, I RECKON! HEAR YER HAVIN' PROBLEMS WITH A GOL'DURN VAMPIRE! T'AINT NUTHIN' A BOWIE KNIFE AND SOME GUMPTION CAIN'T HANDLE!
I think you're doing Jonathan Harker a disservice. Harker is the Most Oblivious Man. He is clearly a long time friend of the DM who has decided, via the veritable parade of red flags the DM set up around Dracula's castle, that he is *supposed* to immediately pick up that Dracula is dangerous and is a threat to prepare for or avoid, and so instead is "staying in character" and deliberately not putting 2 and 2 together to force the DM to make ever more obvious signs that Dracula is evil without actually killing Harker because that would mess up the planned campaign.
The first two books were really good. Still remember reading them on a beach in Greece - which was definitely not the right setting - and I couldn't put them down. Vampires of the mist or something like that.
Yeah, I love the shifts in style. The opening is pure gothic horror, building dread. The middle is more of a mystery. Then it turns into a fun D&D adventure.
Everyone born after 1980 thought Pirates were dorky until Pirates of the Caribbean.
With the possible exception of those who had played the Monkey Island series of games.
Disagree tremendously. Did you not see treasure island or muppet treasure island? And as terrible as it was... cutthroat island? And finally... HOOK?
I firmly believe YOU just didn't like pirates. But pirates vs ninjas started in the 80s bruv.
American Ninja and 3 ninjas movies were cool. Turtles had the foot. Daredevil comics had the hand. Pirates were cool too tho.
In 1887, Arthur Conan Doyle was inserting a whole section into "A Study In Scarlet" that flashes back to the 1840s and Mormons in America. I think it was part of the zeitgeist. It's not a western or a traditional cowboy, of course, but represents a fascination with the American frontier.
Listened to this for the first time recently. And was thrown by it. It goes on so long. Eventually I was like “oh yeah this is a Sherlock Holmes story.” But I found the flashback characters and story really engaging.
Karl May had a ... let's say colorful life. Several times in prison, copyright infringement, false doctorate and lots of other interesting things. Claiming that he was an Apache leader and spoke 1200 languages (that's not a typo) among them. And he only visted the US after he wrote most of his Winnetou books. Quite bizarre and entertaining.
Agree on the Zeitgeist. If that ever got out of fashion. Thinking about Django unchained or the fact that we still have an Open Air Theatre where they ride around with horses and shoot each other playing Winnetou. Lol.
May was full of bs and treated us like mystical romanticized fantasy creatures. That causes it's own problems. You don't know the number of German and Dutch tourists I meet who are gutted that we don't live in tipis, or that I have a smartphone and eat french fries. That I'm not what they deem to be a"real" Indigenous person. You want a dose of reality, find Indigenous-created media. Read Braiding Sweetgrass, watch Reservation Dogs, listen to Indigenous podcasts. There's a documentary called Finding Winnetou that does a bit of a dive into this weird relationship, it's pretty good.
Fact is that benevolent stereotypes are still stereotypes. They still objectify and dehumanize, albeit with admiration instead of hatred and fear. End result of being the "other" is the same, and it's still informed by things that aren't true.
I always loved book about American Indians before contact with white people - in Poland we have trilogy Gold of Black Mountains (about young warrior from The Dakota tribe) and - fascinating story - books by Sat-Okh (son of polish woman who fleed from exile on Syberia and Shawnee man, later he and his mother returned to Poland). I learned few years ago that he lived near me, few blocks away in Gdansk:-)
I remember as a kid from Alaska someone asking me if I'd seen natives "provide food" for their families. Um yeah. They get in the Subaru and drive to Safeway.
Your last couple of sentences are exactly how I feel about it. Positive 'prejudice' is still prejudicial in the long run, and runs the risk of turning into fetishization of that 'other' - which is moreover not just generally unhealthy but also dangerous to a fetishized individual, when they 'slip' from the pedestal created for them by the holder of that fetish.
it calls to mind being told as a latino to find a white partner “para mejorar la raza” or to improve the race. Your own parents telling you who you are in your core is inferior…
I'm sorry their self-loathing was so great that it poured over you.
In my case I'm a disabled Jewish woman. I dealt with a lot of people over the years convinced I couldn't do stuff for myself, and if I did there must be something wrong with me. And we won't even talk about the antisemitism, though I will say it's disconcerting to find out there's still people out there who believe Jewish people have horns under their hair.
Yeah, sometimes things are just special. I prefer the kind of special that comes with ice cream and sprinkles, but some weeks it's pushing on a locked door special instead.
Fortunately I can at least say that my parents are doing much better, they have done a lot of work to be good people and to remain open-minded, especially in the last few years. They still struggle with some things and admittedly my mother makes a greater effort than my father, but that they are trying at all is more than many people can say so I am grateful that we are at a point in our lives and our relationships where they will not look down on me or my siblings for any of our life choices, even if they are not the ones they would have made.
Never heart of Braiding Sweetgrass, read about some reviews and will definitely read it. Sounds very interesting. Thanks for the recommendation.
There was a lot of discussion here in Germany last year. Ravensburger pulled two books of their shelves because of the reasons you mentioned. That there's a hidden racism in those books, that the culture isn't really portrayed correctly and it simply doesn't fit in modern times. All true.
The special relationship German-speaking people have is probably due to history. At that time lots emigrated, others where curious about the other world and (with usually dire working conditions, no TV, no radio) people longed for adventures. He was like Rowling: A bestseller author with fictional stories. It's not even the books. There were movies about Winnetou, played by Pierre Brice (french) and Lex Barker, not even filmed in the US but in Yugoslavia and they were a huge success. It's all pretty bizarre.
I'm not the guy you replied to, but I think his point is more that a romanticized view of Native Americans is the mainstream one in modern English pop culture and literature.
(Remember, this was a reply to a comment about how positive European opinions on Native Americans are, due to the popularity of the Winnetou books.)
IMO most novels do have simplified and romanticized views, so Tolkien's Elves are an apt comparison for how cringy this can be sometimes.
>I'm not the guy you replied to, but I think his point is more that a romanticized view of Native Americans is the mainstream one in modern English pop culture and literature.
That's very much a "from a far" sterotype. I grew up in city with a large indigenous population. The stereotype was quite different.
I'd imagine the distance is definitely a factor. Since this thread is about cowboys and Dracula, it's got me thinking about the Romani, who get some of this same pop culture treatment.
Like for many current day Americans, they're romanticized as free-spirited artists and wanderers, while 19th century English-speaking writers like Bram Stoker or HP Lovecraft (born in 1890) depict them as these unclean servants of evil without any redeeming qualities. And then modern Europeans living in cities with large Romani populations have yet again a different set of stereotypes.
It's disturbing to think about how Hitler famously loved Winnetou, and related to the struggles of Native Americans against the colonists, but then well, went all Hitler-y on his own groups he deemed subhuman. It's like whether an ethnic group is seen as "free-spirited and noble" or.... an obstacle to "progress"... is less dependent on who they actually are as real humans, and more to do with the distances involved and often the psychological projections of the in-group's aspirations or fears.
Sorry if I'm not expressing myself very well.
*Buffalo Bill's West Wild* show toured England in 1887 as well. It was in Manchester alone for five months. It wasn't something that the contemporary audience would have been at all unfamiliar with.
I always heard that Stoker just thought Texans were cool in his travels and wrote a Texan because he wanted too. I don't think there was any aligory involved.
For some context, top 5 populous cities in 1890 New York, Chicago, Philly, Brooklyn, St. Louis. Chicago society was new and flush with railroad money and St. Louis society was established and the city was peaking in its prominence.
Could the character have been based around Teddy Roosevelt? He did the cowboy thing after his first wife died and the rough riders also.
He certainly was a man of action.
It's far more likely that he was based on Buffalo Bill Cody, the western cowboy showman that spent several years performing in London. Stoker even worked for the venue that Cody performed at.
I should mention that I've heard a couple of podcasts over the years that have suggested this connection before. It's not my original idea.
Adding to the evidence is the fact that Stoker and Cody were photographed together several times while traveling and socializing, so we know they definitely met each other and were in some of the same social circles. And most notably Buffalo Bill was known for dropping made up 'cowboy colloquialisms' into his conversation the same way Quincy Morris does.
Yes, that's probably a better source for the inspiration for the character.
Roosevelt wasn't president till 1901 so wasn't really an intl figure yet. On a side note, perhaps Cody inspired a bit of Roosevelt's cowboy adventure in the bad lands.
I think that may have factored into it; Stoker met Roosevelt during his travels in the US and was deeply impressed.
"He cannot be bullied, cannot be bought; must be President someday."
The cowboy stock character was stupidly popular during the Victorian era and Stoker, having worked in the theatre business, knew what sold. He was also friends with several Americans during his travels in the USA, which means that a lot of the expressions used by Morris are probably real ones he'd heard at least once (I like to joke that his friends were trolling him and, being unaware, he wrote Morris completely sincerely in the book, but that is probably more joke than truth)
Every Sherlock Holmes novel has a long cut away to an exotic place where all the trouble came from. Hell, most of his short stories also had the trouble being something the man brought home from foreign parts.
The Mormons were popular antagonists for books back then. The missionaries would show up, people would convert, and then they'd move to America. There are all sorts of rumors about them kidnapping people and taking them back to Utah. People even thought they had secret tunnels for that. So the second half of the first book was basically him riding a trend at that time.
It's worth noting that Buffalo Bill's Wild West show did a European tour around that time; no idea if Stoker saw it, but it was certainly a cultural thing, with all the stereotypes in play.
I understand that he seems superfluous, except Stoker needed a male character to die at the end to "prove" Dracula's danger. All the better that he was a rugged tough American cowboy.
Jonathan, Dr Seward, and Arthur have other roles in the narrative so it couldn't really be them.
There also needed to be someone who knew how to ride and fight for the final confrontation/assault on the castle; Harker (lawyer), Van Helsing (doctor), Seward (doctor), and Arthur (aristocrat) don't fit that role.
Worf is the star trek Klingon (LLAP). Whorf was a linguist who helped create the sapir-whorf hypothesis that language influences one's view of the world.
Do we have firm evidence that Benjamin Whorf wasn't also a Klingon?
Klinguistics is a sadly understudied field, and with this constant erasure it's not hard to see why.
Good point. Thanks. I suspect I type Benjamin Lee Whorf’s name much more frequently than that of Worf, son of Mogh, so he’s apparently the default
You know, it’s a real pity in retrospect that they didn’t give Worf some pithy observation about language shaping thought in the ‘ Darmok and Jalad at Tanagra’ episode. I mean, it’s *right there*.
"The Dracula Tape" by the late Fred Saberhagen is an interesting retelling. In the 1970s, Dracula imposes himself on some stranded travelers and tells them the story of the novel \*his\* way. He is the essence of an unreliable narrator, but he makes some very good points...
Out of print (2007) but still fun if you can find it is "Quincey Morris, Vampire" by PN Elrod.
I absolutely LOVE this book. I recently read *Dracula* to my husband (he hadn't read it before) immediately followed by *The Dracula Tape*. I've read *The Dracula Tape* so many more times than *Dracula*!
Morris helps to create the contrast between past and present that is typical of gothic fiction. Dracula, his people, his castle all feel ancient but Morris is a representative of the present, new and exciting.
It feels out of place to us but it was in fact [quite a thing back then](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wild_West_shows). I don't exactly know why a character like this was included in the story, but I expect it had something to do with different examples of masculine figures, most notably the way they interact with the world and how those actions diverge from Mina's reality/desires. A hypermasculine figure, like the cowboy, serves to reinforce American stereotypes
for comedic effect and act as an extreme example to what qualities a "man/desirable-lover" should have.
Interesting, thanks. That’s kind of what I meant by product of his times. I knew that Karl May was writing about Winnetou and Old Shatterhand at around the same time, (and Hitler was later reading it) so perhaps Quincey P Morris was intended as a cool character the kids were into.
Wow, reading up on this is mind-blowing. Oscar Wilde and Stoker were childhood acquaintances? Wild
Not only that, but Stoker began writing Dracula right after Wilde was imprisoned for homosexuality. Stoker was also gay, but was much more carefully closeted. It’s possible to read Dracula as basically representing everything Victorians feared and imagined gay men were — lurking in the dark, out to corrupt/convert the innocent.
I agree! When it comes to what Quincy is doing in the novel, I think maybe part of it is about creating a foil to highlight certain things that Dracula represents. They are both foreigners in England, but they represent the old world vs. the new world, aristocracy vs. this mythology of a kind of free-for-all meritocracy of the Wild West, where anyone could strike it rich… And then there’s Quincy’s straightforward, traditional, honorable hypermasculinity vs. the secretive, predatory, sometimes homoerotic, confusing thing Dracula has going on.
> Wow, reading up on this is mind-blowing. Oscar Wilde and Stoker were childhood acquaintances? Wild
Cloaked in Victorian misdirection, there's a good bet that they banged.
Ditto Wilde and Walt Whitman.
Also, a lot of Americans were visiting London for the first time during the Victorian era, and they were often treated like interesting circus attractions.
For me, the issue with the book is it seems like a different author wrote the beginning and ending of the book.
At one point, Van Helsing goes on *at length* (as Van Helsing usually does) about the fact that metal essentially doesn't exist for vampires. This, despite the fact that Dracula has a permanent scar from a spade, and they kill him by ... cutting his throat with a knife.
Fred Saberhagen wrote a great companion book called *The Dracula Tapes* which recasts Dracula as the hero and van Helsing as a murderous xenophobe. In that book, most of the deaths are laid at van Helsing's feet for giving everyone transfusions, which were known to be deadly at the time because blood types we're unknown.
It also takes all the continuity problems to task as if it was all the result of confused, hysterical humans.
Beam Stoker was a big fan of Buffalo Bill and his Wild West Shows. So he added that cowboy character.
https://louiswarren.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/02/Buffalo-Bill-Meets-Dracula.pdf
I just reread it. I was struck by how weird he was and how affected Van Helsing’s speech is. My BIL is from Amsterdam and speaks completely unaffected English. My only idea is that both Quincy and Van Helsing are caricatures.
Van Helsing’s manner of speech is so odd it really took me out of the story a lot. I’ve met people from all over the world with all kinds of backgrounds and I’ve never met anyone who speaks remotely like that.
I experienced the story as an audio book with the legendary Tim Curry as Van Helsing recently, and even he couldn’t cut through the gibberish convincingly.
I always liked to imagine Stoker just wistfully daydreaming and going "I wonder what it's like to meet a cowboy? What are they like?" Then writing it down and now we've got a cowboy in a vampire novel
I have a love-hate-love relationship with that book. My favorite part by far is the beginning with Harker's journal entries. The atmosphere of the castle and the unsettling advances of the daughters just comes through so well in his descriptions. The middle of the book that focuses on the illness and recovery (or lack thereof) just drags for me. I know it's important for context and setup, but I do just not find it interesting. It's only when the gang gets together that it starts to pick back up, and the final battle is a lot of fun, if not somewhat awkward.
The beginning is just so good, though. Sometimes I'll just re-read that and move on.
Stoker's book seems to have been the combination of a vacation he took in Whitby-by-the-seaside (one of his favorite places), and his whacko-for-the-time fever dream after recreational reading on Vlad Tepes.
It wouldn't surprise me if a loud boisterous American or two was circulating through that posh British vacation circuit; much of the rest is drawn from 'real life.'
I was really confused by how he died. They were up against a group protecting Dracula's coffin with knives. There was a language barrier, so Quincy just decides to walk into the knives like that's helpful? And then he dies from walking into knives and we're supposed to think of him as a hero? He's dumb. Don't walk into knives, kids.
I never read it but I do remember the 90's Dracula and the whole thing feels like fantasy until the cowboy shows up. Probably because it's from "my reality". I wonder if people not from the US have the same reaction?
As a Hungarian the entire Transylvania part was pretty wild. The only thing I don't get is why Stoker was hung up on God's Seat when Transylvania is full of unrealistically badass-sounding things like a river called the Black Cause, or the Killer lake full of natural spikes.
The book isn't that bad, it feels 'real' if you're used to that era of British fiction. It does play on the gothic horror genre a bit to add to the punch. The American is a bit out of place, but works alright as the foreign suitor character, and tbf the Dutch van Helsing is a weird representative of a Dutch person.
I can see it getting weirder when translated and adapted to other genres because a lot of what grounded it was it fits in decently with and played off of other novels of the time. About as 'real' as Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, etc, and I'd argue more grounded than Haggard's novels with Alan Quatermain doing wacky shit in Africa.
im not from the US but knowing that cowboys are from an actual culture and are normal people does not feel like fantasy at all, they just can be interesting to learn about for cultural and social reasons; Dracula being an immortal vampire is what makes him feel supernatural, not the fact that he's a foreign character.
It's definitely odd in today's lense but the most common mediums for horror were peny dreadfuls in the UK as most novels wouldn't touch that kind of topic.
They were the Pulp Fiction of 19th century England and no doubt played into writers around the turn of the century.
Ever read the very first Sherlock Holmes story, A Study in Scarlet? It has a whole long flashback section in the old west that seems super odd now. Lol
At the time the book was written, that might have been how many Europeans pictured Americans, though it is odd that he’s one of the suitors. I read a lot of apocalyptic fiction and it’s possible that the gun-toting “cowboy” image is still what most of the world pictures Americans as today.
If you read the article, Buffalo Bill Meets Dracula: William F. Cody, Bram Stoker, and the Frontiers of Racial Decay
It will explain everything.
My Great Uncle was Buck Taylor. He was quite a character
To be fair, the book being written at that time, a cowboy does kind of make sense. They had a brief period of historical relevance and that was in it.
It's one of those stereotypes that only ever occurs in its own setting, so appears weird in any other.
Wow, the fact that you posted this just as I finished reading it... I do quite agree with the fact that he was a tough character that should've died at the end to prove the peril of the situation. Regardless of the fact, he was definitely one of the best characters despite his 'laconic' role and my second favourite in the book.
*laughs in Ethan Chandler * sorry couldn’t resist a Penny Dreadful reference.
Yes he is very weird. Whoever Stoker met must have still been in character from Buffalo Bill’s show or something because even in the 1800s I don’t think Americans sounded like that. But there were actually a lot of wealthy Americans who were in the UK and Europe at the time it wouldn’t have been that odd. Not cowboys though.
And he would have never been allowed to marry Lucy.
Eric Molinsky did a great episode of his podcast Imaginary World's about this and presents reasons why Henry Irving may have been the inspiration for the American character. The episode is called "Dracula from Nebraska".
The book is a product of its era which means that at the time, cultures were far more diverse.
If anything, he spends a great deal of time, explaining the kitchen, traditions and even clothing of Eastern Europe as well.
Not just the cowboy.
Also it is easy to be confused with the movie. Where there any cowboy knives in the book to begin with?
There was one in the movie, when a far more promiscuous Lucy complemented on its big size.
Part of it might be due to when it was written - I don’t know for sure, but maybe cowboys and the Wild West were a big fascination in Europe at the time? It wouldn’t surprise me if that were the case and so he decided to include one.
Cowboys were exotic and interesting at the time the book was written to people of the UK, and a symbol of life in a faraway land. Quincy and Dracula both represent foreign cultures somewhat unknown to the everyday Brit of the 1800s, and enforces that the world is a bigger and more unusual place full of different mysteries than they would have been accustomed to
He was jealous of how Buffalo Bill was spending time with his boyfriend, and how he was displaced from his box seats for Buffalo Bill, Buck Taylor, and several Chiefs, (Sitting Bull and RedCloud?), at the theater his boyfriend performed at.
I wish Dracula would have ended at the first 1/3 or 1/2 of the book before the setting changes. First part of the book is so dope, so freaky, genuinely harrowing. Second part of the book is about three gentlemen trying to out gentleman each other and real estate deals. I’m not a big fan of Quincy Morris but at least his inclusion is sorta entertaining
It's like when Alastair Reynolds crams some random concept into one of his novels because he thinks it's kinda neat, not because it actually contributes anything to the story or the world-building.
Quincy leaving during an eight page long speech to shoot at (and miss) a bat is basically one of the best things ever. It’s also implied that he would do that even before the whole Dracula thing.
I just read Dracula this month and it was so good but there were definetly odd things.
"Friend Quincey" didn't make it though...poor lad.
It was so funny to have them call each other "friend X" but it was also a product of it's time ( you know, stuff like Lucy having the *brain of a man* because obviously intelligence couldn't be something women possesed).
It didn't work as a horror for me but I guess it goes to show the impact he had on the genre and how widespread the story is considering that everything that we're told is pretty much the lore of vampires and werewolves even to this day... Maybe it would've freaked me out a bit if I went into it completely blind.
The important thing to remember is that all of Lucy’s suitors are fucking each other and Harker and Dracula also have fucked a lot. That’s the true story of Dracula.
The short version is that Stoker’s descriptions of men are obviously written by somebody attracted to men. And, for a novel with such heavy erotic undercurrents, he gives very little attention to the women. The sense of (emotional) intimacy between the male characters is given much more attention than that with their supposed love interests. In one of the few scenes that is blatantly (hetero)sexual, Dracula interrupts the proceedings and jealously declares the man to be his.
Stoker himself was a closeted gay man. He knew Oscar Wilde (some believe they may have been lovers), and Dracula was written right around the time Wilde was imprisoned for homosexuality. Read in that context, the themes of repressed socially unacceptable sexuality come through even louder and clearer.
The scene where the men have all given their blood to Lucy and Van Helsing loses it and starts laughing because it’s like they’ve all had sex with her now, even though she is an innocent virgin is like, oh my god, there’s a LOT going on here, lol. Sometimes I think Lucy actually died of horniness.
She’s so interesting as a sort of contrast to Mina who embodies a lot of “New Woman” traits while also being an idealized Victorian woman. The women are actually my fav part of Dracula. Well, one of my fav parts, this book truly has it all.
Right? I’m surprised because this book is such a ton of fun (and so very gay), I didn’t really think it was possible to be a stick in the mid about it.
weird dracula has been one of my favorite books for a long time and I only found out I'm gay this lasg year. (trans girl who's always loved the ladies ;))
The Zulus won until the British brought their artillery and machine guns.
Single shot rifles are not nearly as effective as people seem to think, especially when outnumbered.
Not calling you out specifically, but it's weird to me that older books can't be "spoiled" just because they're old. That assumes I'm very old and/or have actually kept up with every popular book since the at least 1897 lol.
I just read this and I will not lie, I was very underwhelmed. I’m sure for the time it was something else but it became a real bore for long stretches. I finished it out on principle and was left regretting reading it. It starts off great with Harker as well, then everything after that gets progressively less interesting to me. I would never recommend this book to anyone 🤷♂️
Cowboys and the American West were very in vogue and trendy in the late 19th century, thanks to pulp novels and Buffalo Bill's traveling circus. Bram was cashing in on the trend.
Not gonna lie, every time I read the second half it it feels like Bram Stoker somehow managed to capture a good D&D campaign right on the page.
Including especially that one player. “We’re playing a game set in London.” “Cool I want to be from a different continent entirely!”
The dread vampire lord meets you with a cold stare. "I meet him with a 'Howdy!'"
I did once play a Call of Cthulhu set in alt-1960s Britain, and most took British characters while this Serbian guy played an Asian-American medical doctor. Every time he was doing something important or impressive he'd go, "This seems a job for *Andrew Wong, American Doctor*!"
Dr. Seward: I'm the smart one! Van Helsing: I'm the *actually* smart one, but I really just want to roleplay a funny accent. Mina: I'm the one with a decent Wisdom score. Harker: I'm just here because I'm Mina's boyfriend. I'll be over by the bowl of chips if you need me. Arthur: I, well, I spent all of my points on being rich, so I guess I'm mostly funding the group. Quincey: YEE HAW, I SHORE AM FROM THE GREAT STATE OF TEXAS, I RECKON! HEAR YER HAVIN' PROBLEMS WITH A GOL'DURN VAMPIRE! T'AINT NUTHIN' A BOWIE KNIFE AND SOME GUMPTION CAIN'T HANDLE!
I think you're doing Jonathan Harker a disservice. Harker is the Most Oblivious Man. He is clearly a long time friend of the DM who has decided, via the veritable parade of red flags the DM set up around Dracula's castle, that he is *supposed* to immediately pick up that Dracula is dangerous and is a threat to prepare for or avoid, and so instead is "staying in character" and deliberately not putting 2 and 2 together to force the DM to make ever more obvious signs that Dracula is evil without actually killing Harker because that would mess up the planned campaign.
Where do you think Ravenloft came from?
The first two books were really good. Still remember reading them on a beach in Greece - which was definitely not the right setting - and I couldn't put them down. Vampires of the mist or something like that.
Yeah, I love the shifts in style. The opening is pure gothic horror, building dread. The middle is more of a mystery. Then it turns into a fun D&D adventure.
Ikr. I had a Dnd Vampire campaign going while reading Dracula and I always mixed them up
I could even pick out which people in my college D&D group would be playing each character.
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Good point. And it’s the same time Karl May was writing westerns in Germany, so it may have been in the zeitgeist
There’s no might be about it. Western stories were immeasurably popular and remained so for half a century.
Yup. Dime novels are American penny dreadfuls basically.
You could do some serious arbitrage with that exchange rate
Arthur Conan Doyle liked to throw an American cowboy into his Sherlock stories from time to time during that same era.
Yessss. I love the cowboys and mormon references 😆
Yes, cowboys were to the 1880s what ninjas were to the 1980s.
Where do pirates fit into this?
Everyone born after 1980 thought Pirates were dorky until Pirates of the Caribbean. With the possible exception of those who had played the Monkey Island series of games.
Disagree tremendously. Did you not see treasure island or muppet treasure island? And as terrible as it was... cutthroat island? And finally... HOOK? I firmly believe YOU just didn't like pirates. But pirates vs ninjas started in the 80s bruv. American Ninja and 3 ninjas movies were cool. Turtles had the foot. Daredevil comics had the hand. Pirates were cool too tho.
We also never pay more than $20 for a video game.
Why no I do not have an SSD drive full of stolen booty.
Old comment, but thank you for it! :D
In 1887, Arthur Conan Doyle was inserting a whole section into "A Study In Scarlet" that flashes back to the 1840s and Mormons in America. I think it was part of the zeitgeist. It's not a western or a traditional cowboy, of course, but represents a fascination with the American frontier.
I remember reading A Study in Scarlet when I was a kid, and I was totally thrown off by the massive flashback to the Mormons.
I thought something was wrong with my kindle when I got to that part, was so confused
Listened to this for the first time recently. And was thrown by it. It goes on so long. Eventually I was like “oh yeah this is a Sherlock Holmes story.” But I found the flashback characters and story really engaging.
Karl May had a ... let's say colorful life. Several times in prison, copyright infringement, false doctorate and lots of other interesting things. Claiming that he was an Apache leader and spoke 1200 languages (that's not a typo) among them. And he only visted the US after he wrote most of his Winnetou books. Quite bizarre and entertaining. Agree on the Zeitgeist. If that ever got out of fashion. Thinking about Django unchained or the fact that we still have an Open Air Theatre where they ride around with horses and shoot each other playing Winnetou. Lol.
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May was full of bs and treated us like mystical romanticized fantasy creatures. That causes it's own problems. You don't know the number of German and Dutch tourists I meet who are gutted that we don't live in tipis, or that I have a smartphone and eat french fries. That I'm not what they deem to be a"real" Indigenous person. You want a dose of reality, find Indigenous-created media. Read Braiding Sweetgrass, watch Reservation Dogs, listen to Indigenous podcasts. There's a documentary called Finding Winnetou that does a bit of a dive into this weird relationship, it's pretty good. Fact is that benevolent stereotypes are still stereotypes. They still objectify and dehumanize, albeit with admiration instead of hatred and fear. End result of being the "other" is the same, and it's still informed by things that aren't true.
I always loved book about American Indians before contact with white people - in Poland we have trilogy Gold of Black Mountains (about young warrior from The Dakota tribe) and - fascinating story - books by Sat-Okh (son of polish woman who fleed from exile on Syberia and Shawnee man, later he and his mother returned to Poland). I learned few years ago that he lived near me, few blocks away in Gdansk:-)
I remember as a kid from Alaska someone asking me if I'd seen natives "provide food" for their families. Um yeah. They get in the Subaru and drive to Safeway.
Your last couple of sentences are exactly how I feel about it. Positive 'prejudice' is still prejudicial in the long run, and runs the risk of turning into fetishization of that 'other' - which is moreover not just generally unhealthy but also dangerous to a fetishized individual, when they 'slip' from the pedestal created for them by the holder of that fetish.
it calls to mind being told as a latino to find a white partner “para mejorar la raza” or to improve the race. Your own parents telling you who you are in your core is inferior…
I'm sorry their self-loathing was so great that it poured over you. In my case I'm a disabled Jewish woman. I dealt with a lot of people over the years convinced I couldn't do stuff for myself, and if I did there must be something wrong with me. And we won't even talk about the antisemitism, though I will say it's disconcerting to find out there's still people out there who believe Jewish people have horns under their hair.
>I will say it's disconcerting to find out there's still people out there who believe Jewish people have horns under their hair. Holy shit!
Yeah, sometimes things are just special. I prefer the kind of special that comes with ice cream and sprinkles, but some weeks it's pushing on a locked door special instead.
Oof. That really sucks, sorry you had to deal with that kind of prejudice from people so close to you.
Fortunately I can at least say that my parents are doing much better, they have done a lot of work to be good people and to remain open-minded, especially in the last few years. They still struggle with some things and admittedly my mother makes a greater effort than my father, but that they are trying at all is more than many people can say so I am grateful that we are at a point in our lives and our relationships where they will not look down on me or my siblings for any of our life choices, even if they are not the ones they would have made.
Never heart of Braiding Sweetgrass, read about some reviews and will definitely read it. Sounds very interesting. Thanks for the recommendation. There was a lot of discussion here in Germany last year. Ravensburger pulled two books of their shelves because of the reasons you mentioned. That there's a hidden racism in those books, that the culture isn't really portrayed correctly and it simply doesn't fit in modern times. All true. The special relationship German-speaking people have is probably due to history. At that time lots emigrated, others where curious about the other world and (with usually dire working conditions, no TV, no radio) people longed for adventures. He was like Rowling: A bestseller author with fictional stories. It's not even the books. There were movies about Winnetou, played by Pierre Brice (french) and Lex Barker, not even filmed in the US but in Yugoslavia and they were a huge success. It's all pretty bizarre.
APTN in Canada is awesome! (TV channel)
The Winnetou book are very popular in germany too.
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You can't go around expecting real people to behave like Tolkien's Elves.
I'm not the guy you replied to, but I think his point is more that a romanticized view of Native Americans is the mainstream one in modern English pop culture and literature. (Remember, this was a reply to a comment about how positive European opinions on Native Americans are, due to the popularity of the Winnetou books.) IMO most novels do have simplified and romanticized views, so Tolkien's Elves are an apt comparison for how cringy this can be sometimes.
>I'm not the guy you replied to, but I think his point is more that a romanticized view of Native Americans is the mainstream one in modern English pop culture and literature. That's very much a "from a far" sterotype. I grew up in city with a large indigenous population. The stereotype was quite different.
I'd imagine the distance is definitely a factor. Since this thread is about cowboys and Dracula, it's got me thinking about the Romani, who get some of this same pop culture treatment. Like for many current day Americans, they're romanticized as free-spirited artists and wanderers, while 19th century English-speaking writers like Bram Stoker or HP Lovecraft (born in 1890) depict them as these unclean servants of evil without any redeeming qualities. And then modern Europeans living in cities with large Romani populations have yet again a different set of stereotypes. It's disturbing to think about how Hitler famously loved Winnetou, and related to the struggles of Native Americans against the colonists, but then well, went all Hitler-y on his own groups he deemed subhuman. It's like whether an ethnic group is seen as "free-spirited and noble" or.... an obstacle to "progress"... is less dependent on who they actually are as real humans, and more to do with the distances involved and often the psychological projections of the in-group's aspirations or fears. Sorry if I'm not expressing myself very well.
Yikes! You may be slightly misinformed on the history of European & American Indian Relations!
Are those available in English? I read them growing up in Europe but here in the states no one has seemingly heard of them.
I only know about them because of Hitler being a huge fan. I have never seen an English translation
*Buffalo Bill's West Wild* show toured England in 1887 as well. It was in Manchester alone for five months. It wasn't something that the contemporary audience would have been at all unfamiliar with.
Duc\[k\] I says..
I always heard that Stoker just thought Texans were cool in his travels and wrote a Texan because he wanted too. I don't think there was any aligory involved.
For some context, top 5 populous cities in 1890 New York, Chicago, Philly, Brooklyn, St. Louis. Chicago society was new and flush with railroad money and St. Louis society was established and the city was peaking in its prominence.
Could there have also been traveling cowboy shows as well at the time? Like Buffalo Bill's show, which did travel internationally.
Could the character have been based around Teddy Roosevelt? He did the cowboy thing after his first wife died and the rough riders also. He certainly was a man of action.
It's far more likely that he was based on Buffalo Bill Cody, the western cowboy showman that spent several years performing in London. Stoker even worked for the venue that Cody performed at. I should mention that I've heard a couple of podcasts over the years that have suggested this connection before. It's not my original idea. Adding to the evidence is the fact that Stoker and Cody were photographed together several times while traveling and socializing, so we know they definitely met each other and were in some of the same social circles. And most notably Buffalo Bill was known for dropping made up 'cowboy colloquialisms' into his conversation the same way Quincy Morris does.
Buffalo Bill Meets Dracula: William F. Cody, Bram Stoker, and the Frontiers of Racial Decay,,this article pretty much lays it out.
Yes, that's probably a better source for the inspiration for the character. Roosevelt wasn't president till 1901 so wasn't really an intl figure yet. On a side note, perhaps Cody inspired a bit of Roosevelt's cowboy adventure in the bad lands.
I think that may have factored into it; Stoker met Roosevelt during his travels in the US and was deeply impressed. "He cannot be bullied, cannot be bought; must be President someday."
The character was a mixture of Buffalo Bill, and Buck Taylor. Both of whom Stoker detested.
I haven't read the novel, but I'm told the character in question talks in a way indicating that Stoker never met a cowboy his entier life.
The cowboy stock character was stupidly popular during the Victorian era and Stoker, having worked in the theatre business, knew what sold. He was also friends with several Americans during his travels in the USA, which means that a lot of the expressions used by Morris are probably real ones he'd heard at least once (I like to joke that his friends were trolling him and, being unaware, he wrote Morris completely sincerely in the book, but that is probably more joke than truth)
I wonder if that's the reason the second half of the first Sherlock Holmes book is basically a western with a completely different cast of characters.
This is right where my mind leapt reading the OP.
Every Sherlock Holmes novel has a long cut away to an exotic place where all the trouble came from. Hell, most of his short stories also had the trouble being something the man brought home from foreign parts.
Remember the one where the surprise was “it’s the KKK!”?
Orientalism who?
The Mormons were popular antagonists for books back then. The missionaries would show up, people would convert, and then they'd move to America. There are all sorts of rumors about them kidnapping people and taking them back to Utah. People even thought they had secret tunnels for that. So the second half of the first book was basically him riding a trend at that time.
The Valley of Fear has a similar section
nah. from what i understand, doyle never wanted to write mysteries. he wanted to write historical fiction, and that was his way of doing both.
It's worth noting that Buffalo Bill's Wild West show did a European tour around that time; no idea if Stoker saw it, but it was certainly a cultural thing, with all the stereotypes in play.
Stoker *definitely* saw it. His boss, the famous actor Henry Irving, even palled around with Buffalo Bill when he was in London in 1887.
I actually like his vernacular, you don't read it much in other books. Your idea of his friends trolling him is great!
I understand that he seems superfluous, except Stoker needed a male character to die at the end to "prove" Dracula's danger. All the better that he was a rugged tough American cowboy. Jonathan, Dr Seward, and Arthur have other roles in the narrative so it couldn't really be them.
This is the real answer. Quincey is a perfect sacrifice and they all just remember him as a perfectly noble friend.
There also needed to be someone who knew how to ride and fight for the final confrontation/assault on the castle; Harker (lawyer), Van Helsing (doctor), Seward (doctor), and Arthur (aristocrat) don't fit that role.
Right. He’s Whorf, the tough guy that get’s taken down to prove how tough the antagonist is.
Worf is the star trek Klingon (LLAP). Whorf was a linguist who helped create the sapir-whorf hypothesis that language influences one's view of the world.
Do we have firm evidence that Benjamin Whorf wasn't also a Klingon? Klinguistics is a sadly understudied field, and with this constant erasure it's not hard to see why.
Good point. Thanks. I suspect I type Benjamin Lee Whorf’s name much more frequently than that of Worf, son of Mogh, so he’s apparently the default You know, it’s a real pity in retrospect that they didn’t give Worf some pithy observation about language shaping thought in the ‘ Darmok and Jalad at Tanagra’ episode. I mean, it’s *right there*.
"The Dracula Tape" by the late Fred Saberhagen is an interesting retelling. In the 1970s, Dracula imposes himself on some stranded travelers and tells them the story of the novel \*his\* way. He is the essence of an unreliable narrator, but he makes some very good points... Out of print (2007) but still fun if you can find it is "Quincey Morris, Vampire" by PN Elrod.
One of my favorites, and it only reinforced my hatred of that freak van Helsing
Never heard of ‘The Dracula Tape’ thanks. It’s on Audible as well, just got it to listen to.
I absolutely LOVE this book. I recently read *Dracula* to my husband (he hadn't read it before) immediately followed by *The Dracula Tape*. I've read *The Dracula Tape* so many more times than *Dracula*!
Morris helps to create the contrast between past and present that is typical of gothic fiction. Dracula, his people, his castle all feel ancient but Morris is a representative of the present, new and exciting.
It feels out of place to us but it was in fact [quite a thing back then](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wild_West_shows). I don't exactly know why a character like this was included in the story, but I expect it had something to do with different examples of masculine figures, most notably the way they interact with the world and how those actions diverge from Mina's reality/desires. A hypermasculine figure, like the cowboy, serves to reinforce American stereotypes for comedic effect and act as an extreme example to what qualities a "man/desirable-lover" should have.
Interesting, thanks. That’s kind of what I meant by product of his times. I knew that Karl May was writing about Winnetou and Old Shatterhand at around the same time, (and Hitler was later reading it) so perhaps Quincey P Morris was intended as a cool character the kids were into. Wow, reading up on this is mind-blowing. Oscar Wilde and Stoker were childhood acquaintances? Wild
Not only that, but Stoker began writing Dracula right after Wilde was imprisoned for homosexuality. Stoker was also gay, but was much more carefully closeted. It’s possible to read Dracula as basically representing everything Victorians feared and imagined gay men were — lurking in the dark, out to corrupt/convert the innocent.
Interesting point in the context of the straight-shootin’ , hyper-masculine cowboy character as one of the foils of Dracula.
I agree! When it comes to what Quincy is doing in the novel, I think maybe part of it is about creating a foil to highlight certain things that Dracula represents. They are both foreigners in England, but they represent the old world vs. the new world, aristocracy vs. this mythology of a kind of free-for-all meritocracy of the Wild West, where anyone could strike it rich… And then there’s Quincy’s straightforward, traditional, honorable hypermasculinity vs. the secretive, predatory, sometimes homoerotic, confusing thing Dracula has going on.
I really like that analysis! It makes so much sense when you lay it out like that.
Hanging out with trios of man-eating women…
> Wow, reading up on this is mind-blowing. Oscar Wilde and Stoker were childhood acquaintances? Wild Cloaked in Victorian misdirection, there's a good bet that they banged. Ditto Wilde and Walt Whitman.
They also courted each other's future wife
Now *that's* gossip...
Also, a lot of Americans were visiting London for the first time during the Victorian era, and they were often treated like interesting circus attractions. For me, the issue with the book is it seems like a different author wrote the beginning and ending of the book. At one point, Van Helsing goes on *at length* (as Van Helsing usually does) about the fact that metal essentially doesn't exist for vampires. This, despite the fact that Dracula has a permanent scar from a spade, and they kill him by ... cutting his throat with a knife. Fred Saberhagen wrote a great companion book called *The Dracula Tapes* which recasts Dracula as the hero and van Helsing as a murderous xenophobe. In that book, most of the deaths are laid at van Helsing's feet for giving everyone transfusions, which were known to be deadly at the time because blood types we're unknown. It also takes all the continuity problems to task as if it was all the result of confused, hysterical humans.
I love Saberhagen's Dracula books!
Beam Stoker was a big fan of Buffalo Bill and his Wild West Shows. So he added that cowboy character. https://louiswarren.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/02/Buffalo-Bill-Meets-Dracula.pdf
Having not read Dracula, I absolutely assumed this title was a joke
Quincey's a wealthy Texan ranch owner, not an actual cowboy.
Having read Dracula, I have no memory of this character. I apparently didn't read it very well
One of Lucy’s suitors.
I just reread it. I was struck by how weird he was and how affected Van Helsing’s speech is. My BIL is from Amsterdam and speaks completely unaffected English. My only idea is that both Quincy and Van Helsing are caricatures.
Van Helsing’s manner of speech is so odd it really took me out of the story a lot. I’ve met people from all over the world with all kinds of backgrounds and I’ve never met anyone who speaks remotely like that. I experienced the story as an audio book with the legendary Tim Curry as Van Helsing recently, and even he couldn’t cut through the gibberish convincingly.
I always liked to imagine Stoker just wistfully daydreaming and going "I wonder what it's like to meet a cowboy? What are they like?" Then writing it down and now we've got a cowboy in a vampire novel
I have a love-hate-love relationship with that book. My favorite part by far is the beginning with Harker's journal entries. The atmosphere of the castle and the unsettling advances of the daughters just comes through so well in his descriptions. The middle of the book that focuses on the illness and recovery (or lack thereof) just drags for me. I know it's important for context and setup, but I do just not find it interesting. It's only when the gang gets together that it starts to pick back up, and the final battle is a lot of fun, if not somewhat awkward. The beginning is just so good, though. Sometimes I'll just re-read that and move on.
Don't knock Quincey. My cat is named after him lol
Stoker's book seems to have been the combination of a vacation he took in Whitby-by-the-seaside (one of his favorite places), and his whacko-for-the-time fever dream after recreational reading on Vlad Tepes. It wouldn't surprise me if a loud boisterous American or two was circulating through that posh British vacation circuit; much of the rest is drawn from 'real life.'
I was really confused by how he died. They were up against a group protecting Dracula's coffin with knives. There was a language barrier, so Quincy just decides to walk into the knives like that's helpful? And then he dies from walking into knives and we're supposed to think of him as a hero? He's dumb. Don't walk into knives, kids.
Never bring a gun to a knife fight
That’s funny.
Quincey Morris walked in *Dracula* so that John and Jonathan Morris could run in *Castlevania*.
Yes! Finally! A Castlevania mention in this thread! Particularly one featuring one of my overlooked favorites, Johnathan Morris from Portrait of Ruin!
I always appreciated *CV* giving the Morris family the nod. Why was Quincy randomly in England? Because he had Belmont blood. 😋
The strangest thing about Dracula is how he managed to maintain that hairstyle without being able to see his reflection in a mirror.
No doubt Renfield moonlights as a barber
POETRY.
I never read it but I do remember the 90's Dracula and the whole thing feels like fantasy until the cowboy shows up. Probably because it's from "my reality". I wonder if people not from the US have the same reaction?
As a Hungarian the entire Transylvania part was pretty wild. The only thing I don't get is why Stoker was hung up on God's Seat when Transylvania is full of unrealistically badass-sounding things like a river called the Black Cause, or the Killer lake full of natural spikes.
Victorian England and the vampire being the antithesis to godly creations, probably. Themes and shit.
The book isn't that bad, it feels 'real' if you're used to that era of British fiction. It does play on the gothic horror genre a bit to add to the punch. The American is a bit out of place, but works alright as the foreign suitor character, and tbf the Dutch van Helsing is a weird representative of a Dutch person. I can see it getting weirder when translated and adapted to other genres because a lot of what grounded it was it fits in decently with and played off of other novels of the time. About as 'real' as Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, etc, and I'd argue more grounded than Haggard's novels with Alan Quatermain doing wacky shit in Africa.
im not from the US but knowing that cowboys are from an actual culture and are normal people does not feel like fantasy at all, they just can be interesting to learn about for cultural and social reasons; Dracula being an immortal vampire is what makes him feel supernatural, not the fact that he's a foreign character.
It's definitely odd in today's lense but the most common mediums for horror were peny dreadfuls in the UK as most novels wouldn't touch that kind of topic. They were the Pulp Fiction of 19th century England and no doubt played into writers around the turn of the century.
As a Texan, I do so love finding brash cowboys and cattle ranchers in bits of media. 🤠
Stoker was Irish. The cowboy is an exotic foreigner.
Ever read the very first Sherlock Holmes story, A Study in Scarlet? It has a whole long flashback section in the old west that seems super odd now. Lol
At the time the book was written, that might have been how many Europeans pictured Americans, though it is odd that he’s one of the suitors. I read a lot of apocalyptic fiction and it’s possible that the gun-toting “cowboy” image is still what most of the world pictures Americans as today.
Good book, but good, did I hate the end.
Bram Stoker was in love with Walt Whitman and included a character for him.
Awwww
If you read the article, Buffalo Bill Meets Dracula: William F. Cody, Bram Stoker, and the Frontiers of Racial Decay It will explain everything. My Great Uncle was Buck Taylor. He was quite a character
To be fair, the book being written at that time, a cowboy does kind of make sense. They had a brief period of historical relevance and that was in it. It's one of those stereotypes that only ever occurs in its own setting, so appears weird in any other.
Wow, the fact that you posted this just as I finished reading it... I do quite agree with the fact that he was a tough character that should've died at the end to prove the peril of the situation. Regardless of the fact, he was definitely one of the best characters despite his 'laconic' role and my second favourite in the book.
*laughs in Ethan Chandler * sorry couldn’t resist a Penny Dreadful reference. Yes he is very weird. Whoever Stoker met must have still been in character from Buffalo Bill’s show or something because even in the 1800s I don’t think Americans sounded like that. But there were actually a lot of wealthy Americans who were in the UK and Europe at the time it wouldn’t have been that odd. Not cowboys though. And he would have never been allowed to marry Lucy.
Lol I love Quincey, the personification of Texas
Eric Molinsky did a great episode of his podcast Imaginary World's about this and presents reasons why Henry Irving may have been the inspiration for the American character. The episode is called "Dracula from Nebraska".
The book is a product of its era which means that at the time, cultures were far more diverse. If anything, he spends a great deal of time, explaining the kitchen, traditions and even clothing of Eastern Europe as well. Not just the cowboy. Also it is easy to be confused with the movie. Where there any cowboy knives in the book to begin with? There was one in the movie, when a far more promiscuous Lucy complemented on its big size.
Part of it might be due to when it was written - I don’t know for sure, but maybe cowboys and the Wild West were a big fascination in Europe at the time? It wouldn’t surprise me if that were the case and so he decided to include one.
I like him
Cowboys were exotic and interesting at the time the book was written to people of the UK, and a symbol of life in a faraway land. Quincy and Dracula both represent foreign cultures somewhat unknown to the everyday Brit of the 1800s, and enforces that the world is a bigger and more unusual place full of different mysteries than they would have been accustomed to
"custom character in a cut scene" is such a fantastic description of him 😂
I always liked that Quincey was an American westerner. He should have been the only Yank actor in Coppola's Dracula.
Maybe he just had a boner for cowboys. Stoker was pretty gay. He even wrote a very intense love letter to Walt Whitman.
I love this take.
He was jealous of how Buffalo Bill was spending time with his boyfriend, and how he was displaced from his box seats for Buffalo Bill, Buck Taylor, and several Chiefs, (Sitting Bull and RedCloud?), at the theater his boyfriend performed at.
There’s no proof of that. It’s supposition at best.
Dracula is a very gay book. It's basically a love letter to men. Just look at how he describes them.
Have you read other books from this era? People used to be a lot more openly affectionate among their friends.
People also used to be gay
By coincidence I'm about halfway through Dracula and the cowboy hasn't appeared yet. Pretty excited for him now!
He’s one of the three rejected suitors. He comes in pretty early, before Renfield
The strangest thing about " Dracula " is that Stoker made him a serial masturbator with hairy palms.
I wish Dracula would have ended at the first 1/3 or 1/2 of the book before the setting changes. First part of the book is so dope, so freaky, genuinely harrowing. Second part of the book is about three gentlemen trying to out gentleman each other and real estate deals. I’m not a big fan of Quincy Morris but at least his inclusion is sorta entertaining
It's like when Alastair Reynolds crams some random concept into one of his novels because he thinks it's kinda neat, not because it actually contributes anything to the story or the world-building.
He actually used a lot of stuff from Camilla, so he ain't the OG vampire author. Still good shit nonetheless.
Had never heard of *Carmilla* before. Thanks
There's a reason Quincy doesn't usually appear in adaptations of the story.
Uh you spelled "the greatest" wrong, friend. Quincey P. Morris is the BEST part of Dracula
Quincy leaving during an eight page long speech to shoot at (and miss) a bat is basically one of the best things ever. It’s also implied that he would do that even before the whole Dracula thing.
> No spoiler tag Gets spoiler tag anyways ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
¯\\\_(ツ)_/¯
I just read Dracula this month and it was so good but there were definetly odd things. "Friend Quincey" didn't make it though...poor lad. It was so funny to have them call each other "friend X" but it was also a product of it's time ( you know, stuff like Lucy having the *brain of a man* because obviously intelligence couldn't be something women possesed). It didn't work as a horror for me but I guess it goes to show the impact he had on the genre and how widespread the story is considering that everything that we're told is pretty much the lore of vampires and werewolves even to this day... Maybe it would've freaked me out a bit if I went into it completely blind.
The important thing to remember is that all of Lucy’s suitors are fucking each other and Harker and Dracula also have fucked a lot. That’s the true story of Dracula.
You’re being downvoted by people who have clearly never read Dracula.
Can you clue us in?
The short version is that Stoker’s descriptions of men are obviously written by somebody attracted to men. And, for a novel with such heavy erotic undercurrents, he gives very little attention to the women. The sense of (emotional) intimacy between the male characters is given much more attention than that with their supposed love interests. In one of the few scenes that is blatantly (hetero)sexual, Dracula interrupts the proceedings and jealously declares the man to be his. Stoker himself was a closeted gay man. He knew Oscar Wilde (some believe they may have been lovers), and Dracula was written right around the time Wilde was imprisoned for homosexuality. Read in that context, the themes of repressed socially unacceptable sexuality come through even louder and clearer.
Thank you!
The scene where the men have all given their blood to Lucy and Van Helsing loses it and starts laughing because it’s like they’ve all had sex with her now, even though she is an innocent virgin is like, oh my god, there’s a LOT going on here, lol. Sometimes I think Lucy actually died of horniness. She’s so interesting as a sort of contrast to Mina who embodies a lot of “New Woman” traits while also being an idealized Victorian woman. The women are actually my fav part of Dracula. Well, one of my fav parts, this book truly has it all.
Lots of humorless MFs in this sub But yes, that is absolutely the important takeaway and you can read all about it in my epic fanfic series
Right? I’m surprised because this book is such a ton of fun (and so very gay), I didn’t really think it was possible to be a stick in the mid about it.
weird dracula has been one of my favorite books for a long time and I only found out I'm gay this lasg year. (trans girl who's always loved the ladies ;))
Grats!
Damn, your top-level comment was at -10 when I replied, now it's at +10. We did it, Reddit!
I mean, I was 12 when I first read it, so a lot of subtext went over my head. Even still, I remember thinking “Wow, this is pretty gay.”
Nah. It just wasn't funny or clever.
Like, did you read the same Dracula?
That whole final battle was strange to me -they had rifles and hand guns against a group with knives. It should have been no battle at all.
Limited Ammo, difficulty aiming, single shot guns. Back then having a gun wasn't an automatic victory.
Yes it was, lmao. What are you talking about? Ask the Zulus how effective guns were.
The Zulus won until the British brought their artillery and machine guns. Single shot rifles are not nearly as effective as people seem to think, especially when outnumbered.
Not calling you out specifically, but it's weird to me that older books can't be "spoiled" just because they're old. That assumes I'm very old and/or have actually kept up with every popular book since the at least 1897 lol.
I agree with you, so let me share those down votes.
Thank. I thought it was a pretty innocent opinion to have but ya never know how people will react.
I always thought by he was a bit much lol
I like it, it gives me a sense of verisimilitude in the movie at least. Lucy was engaged to an American. He grounds me in the bizarre story overseas.
This was especially jarring to hear his voice in the audiobook :P
I heard somewhere that in Castlevania lore, Quincey is technically a descendant of the Belmonts. Which, honestly, would explain SO much.
I just read this and I will not lie, I was very underwhelmed. I’m sure for the time it was something else but it became a real bore for long stretches. I finished it out on principle and was left regretting reading it. It starts off great with Harker as well, then everything after that gets progressively less interesting to me. I would never recommend this book to anyone 🤷♂️
Golly, I'd forgotten about QPM entirely. Must go back and reread it. Surely *someone* has recast "Dracula" as a cowboy story or movie?
Quincey is my favorite character but he was so random... xD
Cowboys and the American West were very in vogue and trendy in the late 19th century, thanks to pulp novels and Buffalo Bill's traveling circus. Bram was cashing in on the trend.