Have you ever thought, if you're familiar with the podcast, about any of the vampires (original or au ones like Gregoriska) as avatars of TMA Fears? For instance, I've seen people associate Dracula with The Spiral.
Dracula does not fit neatly into any one Fear imo. You could make a compelling argument for assigning him to like, eight different fears, though I feel like he's most strongly Web aligned to me.
Though not as much as Carmilla's mother. She's got the "black widow" imagery, she's constantly manipulating people around her, she's surrounded by an entourage (a web if you will) of mysterious servants, and on top of that she can oathbind and modify peoples' memories. You could publish the General's story to AO3 as a Statement fic and most people would never catch on.
Varney is not scary enough to be an avatar of anything. Well, maybe the Lonely late in his story.
Liatoukine could be argued for Desolation or Slaughter, but I'd lean Desolation in spite of his strong associations with war—he seems to enjoy causing pain and torment far more than simply killing people. I think you could make a compelling case for Ioan as Slaughter, though. The Fears are lining up to snack on Relia like a buffet; his ass is not achieving avatarhood I'm afraid.
Kostaki's "Grim Reaper incarnate" vibes are off the charts, so that translates pretty well to End avatar I think. I feel like whatever Gregoriska has going on doesn't really fit into a TMA avatar category—there's not really a clean category for religious horror and guilt. Maybe Desolation? There's some light Eye/Dark/Buried vibes, but not strong enough to tip over into avatarhood for any of them. Smerande's powers also do not give me TMA avatar vibes, but you could probably argue Spiral or Hunt for her, possibly Web.
itching for good comparative literature posting between varney and dracula
You've come to the right place, my friend.
The Corn Will Never Ripen: Contrasting Themes of Fear, Knowledge, and Secret-Keeping in Dracula and Varney the Vampire
"It was the doubt as to the reality of the whole thing that knocked me over. I felt impotent, and in the dark, and distrustful. But, now that I know, I am not afraid, even of the Count."
-- Jonathan Harker, Dracula
"...but at all events one thing is evident, that the parson thought it good sound policy, and it was, to endeavour to nip the thing in the head, and by ascribing it to a dream, put it down as a subject of speculation in the place."
-- Varney the Vampire
(Spoilers ahead for both books)
Fear is a powerful force in Dracula. Count Dracula wields fear as a weapon, using it as an iron hammer to flatten the peasants who live in his shadow or a knife to twist in the hearts of his victims. He delights in terror and the suffering that comes from it, and uses fear as a tool to manipulate people and to turn them against one another. In Dracula, the antidote to fear is knowledge: Jonathan Harker is rejuvenated by Van Helsing's confirmation that his experiences were real, Van Helsing's study of folklore provides the key tools needed to defeat their vampiric foe, and Mina Harker's compilation of journals, articles, letters, and other documents detailing the nature and movements of the Count proves, ultimately, to be the crucial weapon in the fight against Dracula.
Fear, too, is a powerful force in Varney the Vampire. Sir Francis Varney also wields fear to his advantage; however, it quickly proves to be volatile beyond his control, and he finds himself repeatedly harried and pursued by the mobs his presence has whipped up. The fears of the populace are an engine of destruction that churns up everything in its path, desecrating corpses, burning buildings, and on one occasion even murdering a man on the suspicion that he might be a vampire. In Varney the Vampire, the proposed antidote to fear is ignorance, as knowledge of the truth only breeds and increases the destructive power of fear; however, try as they may, the protagonists almost never succeed in concealing the truth from the people who would hurt or be hurt by its knowledge. Flora and Clara do not believe the doctors who tell them their horrible experiences are a mere dream, Flora and George independently arrive at the idea of vampires despite attempts from the others to keep them in the dark, and ultimately no one is ever able to prevent the formation of the book's most formidable villain, The Mob.
Much ink has been spilled about the way that Dracula reflects the many anxieties of the Victorian era; and certainly, fear is omnipresent in its pages. Yet the novel Dracula is not afraid of the dark, placing a much greater focus on the power of love and kindness, the importance of communication, and ultimately the triumph of good over evil. From the compassion of Romanian peasants and Hungarian nuns to the strong bonds of friendship shared between the main cast, Dracula brims over with optimism and hope for humanity, despite the inescapable prejudices of the text.
By contrast, the outlook of Varney the Vampire is bleak. Futility is a recurring theme, from the cartoonish bumbling of the main characters to the tragic character of Varney himself, trapped in an endless cycle of death and undeath. The lesson of Varney is that it is the duty of the enlightened intellectual to shield the frail minds of his lessers from truths which are too horrible for them to bear. Confronted by evidence of vampires, the woman and the emotional man will succumb to horror and despair, while the uneducated peasantry will quickly exaggerate the truth by way of rumor and gossip, eventually turning to mindless and destructive mob violence. Clearly, neither of these things are desirable to Rymer's imagined intellectual; yet the message of the text, over and over again, is that protecting these "lesser minds" is a task doomed to failure. Try as you might, you cannot keep the vampire out of peoples' heads, and the intellectual man is doomed to have his reasoned arguments drowned out by the riotous outcries of the mob.
It is impossible to separate Varney the Vampire's views on fear and knowledge from the author's sexism and classism. While Bram Stoker hammers in the lesson to his protagonists that ignorance benefits no one with the climactic attack of October 3rd, James Malcolm Rymer strongly holds that knowledge of the truth ought to be the domain of educated men and no one else. Women must be kept in the dark. The poor and uneducated must be kept in the dark. Men who are too emotional, and thus feminine, must be kept in the dark. None but the most manly and educated intellectuals are equipped to handle the truth of vampires, even when that truth far more directly concerns the very people that are being excluded from knowledge of it. Lying and gaslighting are acceptable and even virtuous when put to this purpose.
Some of this patriarchal attitude is present in Dracula, especially as regards the treatment of Lucy and her mother, but Bram Stoker appears to be mostly against the concept, as his heroes pay dearly for it with Mina later. Though his handling of it falls rather short of 21st century standards, Stoker attempts to show the value in cooperation between people of all kinds. The Romanian peasants do all they can to protect Jonathan Harker from Dracula; the nuns in Budapest take him in and care for him; Van Helsing and Quincey, both (admittedly Western) foreigners, are essential members of the effort to defeat Dracula; Renfield has a heroic turn after being shown kindness by Mina, and dies fighting Dracula with his bare hands; Mina, a woman, leads the team and plays a crucial role in Dracula's defeat. Even with Victorian prejudice rearing its ugly head, often glaringly, throughout the text, the contrast between Stoker's worldview and Rymer's is stark.
As a final note, I'd like to compare the portrayal of gender and emotion in Dracula and Varney the Vampire. Emotion in the Victorian era, as I've alluded to elsewhere in this post, was gendered. More specifically, emotion was feminine. Men were expected to control their emotions; women, being seen as weaker, were not given the same expectations of stoicism, although it was still considered impolite for a woman to display strong emotions in public. (This is what the drawing room, actually a withdrawing room, was for.) With this in mind...
Wow, the characters in Dracula cry a lot. Jonathan cries in despair during his captivity, Arthur will cry on anyone's shoulder, Van Helsing has his King Laugh moment, and even the normally stoic Seward breaks down into his phonograph at one point. Fear and trauma are not belittled, and grief is allowed room to breathe. Alongside all this emotion, we see the strict gender roles of Victorian society broken down in other ways too. Jonathan takes comfort in femininity during his confinement in Castle Dracula, imagining himself in the position of medieval ladies writing letters and comparing himself to Scheherazade; later, he holds onto Mina's arm while they walk, the opposite of Victorian custom. Mina studies shorthand and practices her typing in anticipation of working alongside Jonathan, crossing the strict male/female division of Victorian society between the working and domestic spheres. Van Helsing describes her as having "a woman's heart and a man's brain", and after learning his lesson about patriarchal sexism and keeping secrets, follows her lead in the hunt for Dracula. Stoker yearns for a kinder and less regimented world than the one he lives in, and in Dracula he writes that world.
Rymer, on the other hand, fears the degradation of the regimented world, and writes in Varney a cautionary tale of the dangers of Too Much Emotion, demonstrated most starkly in the final vignette of his sprawling epic. When Clara Crofton is murdered by Varney, her father is deeply affected by grief at losing his daughter; and though other characters, chiefly Flagship Manly Intellectual Dr. North, attempt to chastise him out of expressing that grief, they ultimately fail and he is driven to madness. Clara's fiance, Ringwood, is also stricken by the loss. When he discovers Clara has risen as a vampire, he chases after her, begging to join her in undeath; but while this sentiment in Dracula is portrayed as the ultimate expression of love and devotion, in Varney it is portrayed as silly and irrational, and Ringwood, too, ultimately faces material consequences for his emotional outburst: he is attacked by Varney and knocked unconscious.
In Dracula, emotional connection and communication are embraced, and the bonds forged by this type of connection are instrumental to overcoming fear and defeating evil. In Varney the Vampire, grief is dangerous, love is foolish, and fear is a greater and more pervasive evil than any monster that lurks in the shadows.
all the clara comics i've posted (including the earlier ones with floyd) are part of an au concept i've been developing with @thegoatsongs, one where both clara and varney survive their canon deaths and clara has to learn how to be a vampire. the latest set of comics center around clara tracking down varney, who is somewhere in naples recovering from the volcano, in order to confront him and convince him to teach her about the whole vampire thing. bevan is there as her escort. clara, knowing varney primarily as "guy who murdered her", was not expecting him to be so...mopey.
detailed outline of this au under the cut for anyone who's interested
so, as i've touched on in other posts, clara crofton's short-lived career as a vampire is kind of disappointing. she gets no speaking lines, no real autonomy, and her sole victim is a random village girl rymer made up on the spot, which to me is criminal misuse of the tools HE GAVE HIMSELF to work with, because clara has a younger sister. everything is lined up for an emotionally devastating clara arc that actually treats her like a character. all we have to do is revive her and varney from their canon deaths and keep the narrative rolling past chapter 237.
so. clara stumbles home one night, soaked to the skin and covered in mud and her own blood, disoriented and with no memory of what happened to her as a vampire. at this point, clara isn't aware she's died, nor that she's a vampire. she's cold and hungry and scared and confused, and she's positive something dreadful has happened to her to leave her in this state, but she doesn't know what it is.
her father, upon seeing her, pronounces that A Miracle Has Occurred! his daughter is alive and well! (he is in DEEP denial. clara's death and undeath did a number on his mental state.)
her family takes her inside, get her cleaned up and dressed and give her a hot meal. under the recommendation of dr. north, world champion of gaslighting, they don't tell her about the whole vampire episode. better to put that whole thing behind them as a bad dream. as sir george keeps insisting, she's clearly alive and well now...right?
she's not well. later that night, she throws up her meal. this quickly becomes a pattern--she can't keep any food down. dr. north puts her on increasingly more restricted diets in an attempt to find some way to keep her fed, but her health continues to decline. her temperature drops, her pulse grows slow and erratic, and she gradually becomes weaker and weaker.
and then one night, clara awakens to the full moon shining through her bedroom window, and a raging hunger, or perhaps thirst, inside her. what happens next, she doesn't entirely remember. she only knows that when she comes to, her hunger is gone, and she feels better than she has in weeks...standing over her sister's bed, with blood on her hands and face. her sister, emma, is bleeding from her neck.
there is no more hiding the truth from clara. her brothers tell her everything, while dr. north sees to emma's injury. no one here knows very much about vampires, so the question hangs over all their heads like an axe: what will happen to emma? will she die? will she turn?
And Then Clara Is Summoned To A Vampire Council. the vampires have caught wind of varney's death and are seeking to expand their ranks in his absence, so they're having another exhumation. clara takes the opportunity to try to learn a few things about Being A Vampire by asking them questions, but none of them are very helpful. several of them, who don't know much about varney other than "he's really old and infamous", express doubt that he could actually be finally dead. fearing what will happen when she next grows hungry, clara decides to take a risk and travel to naples in search of varney, hoping he will give her answers.
she opts to travel with mr. bevan since he managed to have something of a rapport with varney before he died. she's still terrified of varney and hopes having bevan there will decrease the chances of Something Bad Happening. assuming varney survived, that is.
this brings us to the latest round of comics, in which clara finally tracks down varney's temporary residence in naples, steeling herself to come face to face with her killer--only to find him having Depression Time on the floor.
the guilt over clara's death was already eating him alive before she turned up in person. he's not taking this meeting well. eventually he does pull himself together enough to answer her questions, and turns out to be much more helpful than the other vampires.
