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same with Frankenstein
“and then the monster creeps on a family for like a few months while hiding in their coal shed and brooding”Just finished that this morning! Spoilers below. If you intend to read the book, do NOT go any further.
So the monster wakes up (we’re not told what caused this), Frankenstein is horrified at what he’s created (he knows what the fuckin’ thing looks like, he made it!), runs out in the street for 2 days, his bff spies him and takes him home. Frankenstein (who’s not a doctor BTW) runs upstairs and is relieved the monster has ambled off.
“Oh thank Heavens that 8-foot abomination before God is wandering around loose. Not my problem!”
We don’t get a solid description of the monster, but apparently he’s horrifying to behold. What? Did Frankenstein make him ugly on purpose?! We’re also not told where or how he came up with the biological material, no grave robbing is mentioned.
And I think the monster spent over 2 years in the shed? And in all that time no one ever looked in there?! He learns French by listening to them. So where did he learn English?!
Frankenstein is such a panicky little bitch that every time he gets upset he goes into a fugue and goes nuts for months on end. He does this at least 3 times, if not more. “Boo!” “I have to go to the sanatorium.”
The monster has already killed Frankenstein’s little brother and framed a close friend for it, getting her hanged. It threatens Frankenstein to continue fucking his world up if he doesn’t make a bride companion. Frankenstein and bff are going to Scotland where Frankenstein is going to secretly do this thing. He takes nearly a fucking year touring about. “Hadn’t you better hustle up in case the monster gets impatient?”
Frankenstein spies the monster watching him work on the bride, freaks out and destroys her right in from of him. Um, I would not piss off an 8-foot monster with superhuman speed and strength. Monster says, “Catch you on your wedding night! K I love U bye bye!” On his wedding night, Frankenstein, while looking around the house for the monster, sends his bride upstairs alone. You know what happens next.
So much more weirdness. And BTW, I think Frankenstein should have married his bff instead of his cousin, seemed way more into the guy than her.
EDIT: One more thing. Why did Shelly blank out the dates? August, 8th, 17__? 1701 was a very different time than 1799. What was that woman hiding?!
everyone’s always surprised this was written by a teenage girl until they actually read the thing lol
And worth noting that we can pretty directly thank the same thing that brought us Frankenstein for bringing us Dracula.
Frankenstein was written in the 1816 “year without summer” when Percy and Mary Shelley, Lord Byron, and Byron’s doctor John Polidori were staying at a villa in Switzerland and held a writing contest. Mary Shelley wrote Frankenstein. Byron wrote “A Fragment”, which Polidori would later expand into The Vampyre, the first modern vampire novel that coalesces many modern ideas about vampires.
Oh, so it’s the twilight of its era, that makes way too much sense.
We don’t get a solid description of the monster, but apparently he’s horrifying to behold. What? Did Frankenstein make him ugly on purpose?!
Isn’t it explicitly mentioned he tried to make it beautiful but it all looks wrong once it’s alive? This part specifically:
His limbs were in proportion, and I had selected his features as beautiful. Beautiful! Great God! His yellow skin scarcely covered the work of muscles and arteries beneath; his hair was of a lustrous black, and flowing; his teeth of a pearly whiteness; but these luxuriances only formed a more horrid contrast with his watery eyes, that seemed almost of the same colour as the dun-white sockets in which they were set, his shrivelled complexion and straight black lips.
Dn’t forget about how he loved literature and was a die hard romantic
Every single character was a drama queen, the monster even more so.
Eastern European retiree goes on a cruise.
Dracula sneaks out of the country dressed in his usual all black clothes, plus a silly straw hat.
Could not stand the cowboy. Where the hell did Stoker get his impression of Texans?! Quincey is so over-the-top it’s ridiculous.
Best part? Whole gang is chillin’ in the parlor one night and sees a shape, presumably a bat, looking in the window. The cowboy skins his hog leg and goes blasting! Now everyone in the room is fucking deaf and he probably smoked a curious street urchin.
Stolen from reddit:
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!
These are my precise reasons for loving Quincey.
I absolutely love how the other characters are always going on about just how great Quincey’s manhood is.
Van Helsing: I’m the actually smart one, but I really just want to roleplay a funny accent
And give massive monologues about bizarre pseudoscientific ideas that make no sense no matter how hard you think about them.
Arthur: I, well, I spent all of my points on being rich, so I guess I’m mostly funding the group
Well, on being rich and on having status he can pull to make people listen to him.
Van Helsing keeps fucking off back home and cryptically suggesting that he knows what is going on but the others aren’t ready to hear it yet, but never once suggests moving Lucy out of London where presumably the vampire’s homeland soil is kept.
I loved the book. Prefered it to Coppola’s movie for sure.
“Woah”
I love the book (there’s a reason I started this Community’s Dracula bookclub!) but it does drag at times. I’ve also seen many of the movies, seen it in ballet, seen one straight play adaptation, and played in the pit of the Frank Wildhorn musical (as well as watched many online recordings of usually not very good quality). The straight play was my favourite adaptation, and definitely the most faithful; I wish they had filmed it and sold DVDs/digital downloads, tbh. The musical is my second pick because it’s pretty faithful even if it amps up the romance, and the amount of drama you get is awesome. I definitely prefer the book to any of the film adaptations I’ve seen though.
I read the first book and was both:
- surprised the book did drag (so ahead of it’s time!)
- disappointed that the drag disappointed you
Then I realized I am an idiot.
Wait why were you an idiot?
Did not know there were that many adaptations !
Oh yeah. I mean it’s public domain, so anyone can adapt it, so there have been a lot of adaptations.
There are at least 4 or 5 musical adaptations that I’m aware of (though Wildhorn’s is by far the most successful, even if it’s not very successful itself—Wildhorn, a West End one that was written but never produced, at least one comedic one, and a Spanish-language one).
The straight-play I saw was locally-produced by a fairly successful (but certainly not huge) acting troupe that does tours around Australia. Unrelated to that, last year there was a play with just a single actor playing all roles (she had previously done single-actor versions of Dorian Gray and Dr Jekyll & Mr Hyde) in Australia, and just within the last month the UK saw an all-female adaptation.
Then there’s films, where as of 2019 there were at least 12 adaptations that stuck close enough to the book to be the subject of this comparison. (And add at least one more for 2024’s Nosferatu.)
It’s been done in all sorts of other media. The ballet I mentioned I’ve seen used music from the 1979 film composed by John Williams, but it’s been in ballet many times.
One thing I’m surprised I’ve never seen is a film adaptation as a 21st century found-footage film. As you know, but anyone else in here who hasn’t actually read it may not, book is an epistolary novel. Basically the literary equivalent of a found-footage film (a la Paranormal Activity or the Blair Witch Project), made up of letters, diary entries, transcribed phonograph recordings, and cuttings from newspapers. It would be such a natural adaptation to use shaky handheld mobile phone film.
Do you know who else put a texan in most of his novels?
Ian Fleming. Bond’s CIA counterpart, Felix Leiter.
Fleming made it a point to express how Bond liked texans.
I wonder how both Fleming and Bond would feel nowadays.One weird bit was if they were caught in some sort of gunfight or scuffle, Leiter would cry out “Santiago!”, to identify himself to Bond, because it seems that the Spanish translation of “James” is NOT “Jaime”, BUT “Santiago”.
According to Ian Fleming, at least.He lives in a castle on top of a cliff. There is a storm hitting the castle and nothing but the castle.
