ongoing re:dracula thoughts
i am so very amused by how long and how adamantly dr van helsing keeps up his secrecy around Lucy's vampirism. like, as a 21st century reader (who is already quite familiar with the vampire tropes which dracula helped popularize), it was immediately clear to me that Lucy got vamp'd. i also suspect that anyone at the time would have been able to put two and two together, even with none of the same prior context. because of this, its just really amusing that every other thing van helsing says is something like "i'll explain later ..." or "which could mean nothing ..." like dude we all know. we all know what your silly little secret is lmao
i appreciate how several of the things that "go wrong" and prevent the gang from saving Lucy are on paper the fault of foolish ignorant women whose actions unknowingly doom Lucy, but are actually at their root the fault of ... fffucking Dracula for targeting her in the first place. and that the narrative supports this by not blaming the women and having all the male characters insta-forgive them, never losing sight of who their real common enemy is. like, oh the women feel all guilty like it's their faults, but no, it's the fucking fault of the creepy guy who stalked and raped her. like, let's all be mad at him actually
as others have long pointed out, the text's unawareness of blood types is really funny in hindsight. yeah let's just combine this shit willy nilly, five peoples' blood all mixed together, that'll fix her
i also love how so much of this chunk of the book consists of sharing each others' notes. like "yeah, i wrote a whole diary about exactly the thing we're all dealing with. wanna read it?" it's honestly sort of refreshing to be able to just say "and then they were all on exactly the same page" instead of fucking around with contrived ignorance for far too long
this also makes the story so much more about the act of record keeping, not just the events themselves. and because the text consists entirely of in-universe documents, everything we've read is also available to the characters in the story, which sort of allows the book to loop back on itself in a way i appreciate
finally, i love how quincey is just ... there. no reservations, not much personally at stake, he just wants to know how he can best help his friends. what a team player
