How different are Dracula's Demeter and TLVOTD?
Oof. Okay. This is going to hurt me as a staunch THE BOOK IS ALWAYS BETTER believer, but.
The Last Voyage of the Demeter is very much the better story. By a wide margin.
Spoilers for The Last Voyage of the Demeter, Dracula's Demeter, and Dracula below
Just speaking on differences, TLVOTD does sadly tuck in that Universal Pictures nonsense about ~the sun hurts vampires~ and sacrifices some of the Captain's coolness and giving the Romanians and the Roma any respect due to the origins of the poor chick who got boxed up as a bloodbag stowaway. But it is still a very very well done Dracula as an Actual Goddamn Monster horror film. Even the close of the movie--yes, with more random action slapped on for cinematic reasons--leaves a door open for one last knife twist as OC Protagonist stalks off into the shadows to hunt Dracula down...
...and possibly accidentally-brilliantly nodding to a certain scene in the novel where the gang enters the Count's Piccadilly house and finds a bowl of bloodied water. RIP.
It's a good scary story and it built something enjoyable out of the Demeter chapter's foundation. Definitely a refreshing departure from the constant sexypire barrage of Draculas.
Dracula's Demeter feels like a con job by comparison.
Specifically because it opens so promisingly. It's very obvious that the author read Dracula front to back and loved what he read! He uses tons of direct lines from it! He has period accurate details dappled throughout for the Demeter's ship and crew! He does an admirable job of building up his own two Requisite Guy and Girl Stowaway Romance OCs so they can do Meaningful Things, just like TLVOTD's duo do! Dracula is sinister and erudite and--credit where it's due--delivers an absolutely nightmarish demise to poor Petrofsky. Holy shit.
With all that, you can forgive the kind of rough editing and the way that (parentheses) and ALL CAPS ACTION WORDS get sprinkled throughout like someone who just peeled their stuff straight from Ao3. It's fine, it's fun. At first.
And then shit goes downhill and straight into Dracufetishland: Naughty Nautical Edition.
Because it turns out that where TLVOTD had Required Girl Character get to be a whole person and not a gossamer-dressed sexy lamp (even having been chomped), DD's Required Girl gets chomped and immediately goes full 'lol my human boyfriend is a loser compared to Count Fuckula,' in a way I might forgive if we were going for some unrelated vampire's story--but no. This is a Dracula story and she's in full Coppola mode.
She gets turned, ogles what's left of her reflection so we can talk about how hard and visible her nips are in a borrowed shirt, gets Dracuhorny, and ditches her boyfriend.
And then, when Earnest Englishman Boyfriend tries to burn the ship and save the day, he gets burned alive, and then Dracula orders Vampire Girlfriend to garrote the poor guy to death while wearing the convenient billowy white dress she brought onboard. And she does. Happily. There's not even a crumb of will or even dissent left in her the way we see with the goddamn Weird Sisters who were with him for centuries and actively tried to steal Jonathan from their master***, or even Bloofer Lady Lucy reaching for Art.
Just a pointless fuck you of a death that added nothing.
Followed by Dracula snapping Vampire Girlfriend's neck, double-kills her, and chucks her into the sea while chuckling about how silly it is to think that he would want a companion, ha ha!
...
Yes, I am also staring at the camera The Office-style, thinking about -checks notes- the Weird Sisters, Jonathan, Lucy, a random ass girl in Piccadilly, Mina...
Oh, that Dracula. Such a loner.
And all that leads to the Captain with the rosary--WHICH ISN'T EVEN HIS--and the last few chapters which are just pure padding about Dracula shoving the Demeter to shore. After getting a cutaway scene to Dracula hopping into Lucy's brain somehow to grope her while Mina watches. For reasons.
The book is, in short, pointless.
The OCs are pointless. Them being on the boat is pointless. Nothing they do, nothing the author has the crew or Dracula do, adds literally anything to what was already in the Demeter section of the book. There is no meat here, only voluptuous gristle.
And the thing is! The infuriating thing is! Because this is a Dracula*** story, it is still technically more respectful than the bulk of other writing and media about Dracula, because so much of it is doubly extra-fetished never-read-the-book never-liked-the-book utter garbage.
So I still have to give it 3/5 stars as a Dracula story. 1.5-2 in isolation.
Anyway, I'm going to go re-watch TLVOTD now
