#keithleecastle!dracula

[witchofthemidlands]

i was trying to innocently watch young dracula when my yt did something cursed. i think this is the 4am post https://www.tumblr.com/witchofthemidlands/743528598169894912/i-am-still-battling-through-my-young-dracula-hyper i made the other day either coming back to haunt me or trying to warn me not to write the vlad vs a “dreamworld” 1931-2023 dracula multiverse 😅 i stand by what i said though vlad would see this version of dracula in his normal clothes & think a normal dracula? 🥹 for me? 🥹 with all his vlad dracula hope & optimism only to get scarred for unlife & after. the renfields are trading & discussing the consistency, the delicacy of insects, jonno's having a quarter life crisis, agatha wants to study them for science, ingrid's watching this like a sports match, vlad is rocking back & forth hoping he's going to wake up in the himalayas & the draculas are trying to out c(o)unt the other, they're battling their way through whitby, terrorising the nearest goth festival, the draculas are fightingggg.

who wins?

[witchofthemidlands]

Dracula is one of my favourite novels of all time, I did a (roast for some) essay on the novel & various adaptations for the characters back when I did my degree, I love it, it's one of the four books I have an actual second beautiful copy of but every time EVERY TIME I watch a new adaptation of the characters I then immediately have to go back & watch the entirety of Young Dracula. No, it is not an adaptation of the story even though I would have sold my soul to see (1) episode in which something went wrong & they ended up re-enacting parts of the novel but it is EVERYTHING to me, I am very much convinced seeing Ingrid on my television as a 7 year old is what ensured my gay awakening & I am certain this show is why I became a goth because it was FUN, it was hilarious, it was so clever because whilst it wasn’t an adaptation of the book ALL of the core characters were featured in some shape or form in the most inventive way. Young Dracula, a show for kids, probably on one of the lowest budgets of a Dracula adaptation managed to unleash a masterpiece. To me, it gave us one of the best versions of the Count. He was hilarious, the right amount of evil, camp & had the BEST wigs (especially in the continuation) I have ever seen on a Dracula. Honestly now EVERY TIME EVERY SINGLE TIME I think of Dracula or picture what Dracula looks like when I re-read the novel. I just see HIM, Keith Lee Castle's version of Count Dracula.

Of course I sometimes see other great versions such as the BelaLugosi!Dracula, GaryOldman!Dracula, RichardRoxburgh!Dracula, & admittedly JonathanRhysMyers!Dracula when I'm reading the novel so I am curious, to all my fellow Dracula fans, who do you all see as the Count when you're reading the novel?

[witchofthemidlands]

so because my young dracula hyperfixation bombarded me out of nowhere, reduced me to the disaster i was for this show as a child & still has me in its chokehold. it convinced me to rewatch all other versions of dracula i have seen in my lifetime, even the questionable ones to see if they were as bad as i remembered them to be back when i throughly roasted one in my essays for my degree & in one of the adaptations i watched there's a part where it turns out count dracula turned a baby into a vampire:

so with that horrifying image my brain struck back & i am making it everyone else's problem 🧛🏻:

[witchofthemidlands]

don't know how this has happened but somehow my young dracula hyperfixation that i last had when i was 14 has come back with a vengeance 10 years on & all i can think about is how brilliant seasons 1&2 were. i love everything about it but most of all, i love how the majority of stokely just think that the count dracula is just an intense european single dad of two goth.