The Fox Says: I WILL STEAL YOUR SANITY

Welcome to a Friday afternoon in this office, courtesy of this video and Twitter:

·    Coworker 1: So, I've been thinking a lot about this Syrian crisis and...crap...hold on... WHAT THE FOX SAY!!!! RING-DING-DING-DINGERINGEDING!!! #ylvis

·  Coworker 1: "COW GOES 'MOO'...FISH GO 'BLUB'...SEAL GOES 'OW OW OW OW'... Kill me!!! Fuckin' kill me!!! #ylvis

·   Coworker 1: WA-PA-PA-PA-PA-PA-POW!!!! I...still have strength....to grab this letter opener....stick it in my....fucking jugular.... #ylvis

·  Coworker 1: HATEE-HATEE-HATEE-HO.......letter opener....too dull....will.....throw body onto..... letter opener....to pierce sternum...must kill myself

·  Coworker 2: WHAT DOES THE FOX SAY?! Thank you, #Ylvis, thank you. #myjam #wapapapapapapow

·   ‏Coworker 1 to Coworker 2: ........must.....get hammer.....smash it....into skull....Please......kill me.....

·  Coworker 2 to Coworker 1: shhh shh shh shh, no tears, just sleep.

Kicking Brain Puppies

Editing is hard. Just getting that out there for any and all aspiring writers. Slashing words you've grown accustomed to, and in some cases even grown to like (possibly A LOT), does not lead to great joy until you get yourself in a headspace capable of knowing what you do is meant to make your work stronger. Once you wrap your mind around that and accept it, it can make you stronger, too. After a while you begin to feel that just by deleting passages and correcting spelling and grammar issues for clarity, you have done what is necessary to make your work better.
Oh no, sweets.
There's more.
It's called re-writing.
And it's a pain in the ass.

Your editing mind has finally come to terms with its existence and you have a symbiotic relationship. You cut things out, and change some structural issues, and feel better about yourself, the process of editing, and your work as a whole.
Then you must go back and look at the work as a writer again, to fix plot holes, clarify and/or strengthen characters and relationships, add layering details... and your writer brain hides in a corner like a punished child, neglected by time apart from it and weakened and afraid from having the editing mind push it away while Editing Mode trumped all other needs for the work.
It's malnourished, depressed, and confused as to why you're seeking it out again with such joyful energy when three weeks ago you banished it in favor of the bullying Editor Mind.
Editor Mind doesn't care. It's happy to hang around and wait until you need it again (because it knows you'll come crawling back soon enough). Writer Mind, however, looks at you with plaintive eyes and quiet whimpers of sadness. You coax, you bribe, you get down to face it on its level and ask oh so sweetly for it to come back to you. It's wary, though. You wounded it and it hasn't recovered yet. It remembers screaming to you, wanting to be released while you had it locked in a closet when working with Editor Mind, pleading and begging to rewrite passages. You didn't listen. You needed to edit. You didn't want to shut away the Writer Mind, but you exist in a world of deadlines which Writer Mind doesn't understand. Editor Mind does, though, so you needed its help. Editor Mind is damn good at telling Writer Mind to STFU and mind itself. So good that Writer Mind has just been likened to an abused puppy for an entire paragraph in hopes that giving it the treat of extended metaphor might coax it out of hiding.

*le sigh*

This is one of those times I know I need to be a writer. It drives me, feeds me, pulses within me. Without it I am utterly lost. That ain't to say it's easy, though. Easy right now would be to chuck it all aside and turn to something that is... like knitting, or playing piano, or becoming an expert marks-person. I can't do any of those. I have a puppy to coax out of a corner so I can finish my novel, start writing query letters, and then have myself and my puppy kicked an inestimable number of times until someone coaxes us out of a corner...

There's nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and open a vein. ~Walter Wellesley "Red" Smith

Falling on Swords While Falling for Wizards

One of the ‘joys’ of moving is potentially losing one’s DVR forever and thus all the awesome hours of television contained within (though if DirecTV can mount a dish on the side of our complex, we probably won’t lose it… still, one can never be too careful when it comes to precious television – teacher, mother, secret lover). While packing this weekend I watched a slew of movies* along with a couple hours of mindless television and five episodes of Merlin.
Out of all this stimulation, I found myself surprised (though I shouldn’t be) that what affected and stuck with me most was Merlin, particularly one of the scenes toward the end of "The Changeling." Seeing Merlin finally starting to take the reigns as more than Arthur’s servant, beginning to become his adviser, really exposes some of the depth and complexity added to the series throughout season three. It only gets deeper from this episode forward, but even this singular moment in an otherwise ‘creature of the week silliness’ episode points toward better and more in-depth stories as the series continues to progress.
It’s also pretty damned adorable to hear Colin Morgan’s tone of voice shift when Merlin’s allowed to be adviserly.

From a personal standpoint, the destiny-laden, ceremonial sword stabbing doesn’t feel so far removed from situations I’ve experienced (and some I am currently experiencing), which makes the ancient ‘rules’ of chivalry, duty, and honor seem less removed from daily modern life than they typically feel. While we’re not all destined to rule kingdoms, or advise on how to do so, or charged with the protection of VIPs and/or entire nations, we all have aspects of our life for which we are (or feel) utterly culpable as individuals and sometimes it seems easier to throw ourselves on the ceremonial sword rather than face up to what we know is right, rather than give into something out of a sense of duty or tradition.

As a writer and English major I’ve often felt that one of the great benefits my degree has over my writing is that it taught me all the rules so I would know how and why I break them, when I do. Granted, I learned tons of nifty tidbits about life, society, history, industry, creativity, war, love, pain, beauty, theatre, poetry, music, politics and what makes the world worth living in for different folks at different points in our shared history. Still, much like Arthur following his instinct (and Merlin’s advice) to do what feels right and not just what is expected of him, I feel that with both writing and life we all need a reminder once in a while that traditions can and should be broken when there is reason compelling enough to alter them.


Love, in an unselfish and giving state, complicated as it can be, is a damn good reason to buck against tradition in favor of creating something better.


*Slew = Eight. Miranda, Pygmalion, Only Angels Have Wings, Alex Rider: Operation Stormbreaker, Bride & Prejudice, Pride & Prejudice, and Sneakers


Merlin: I've brought you your ceremonial sword.
Arthur: Is that for me to fall on?
Merlin: Hopefully not. What's wrong?
Arthur: You wouldn't understand, Merlin. You have no idea what it's like to have a destiny you can't escape.
Merlin: Destinies are troublesome things. You feel trapped. Like your whole life has been planned out for you and you've got no control over anything and sometimes you don't even know if what destiny has decided is really the best thing at all.
Arthur: How come you're so knowledgeable?
Merlin: I read a book.
Arthur: And what would this book tell you? Should I marry her?
Merlin: It's not really my place to say, sire.
Arthur: I'm asking you, it's your job to answer.
Merlin: If you really want to know what I think? I think you're mad. I think you're all mad. People should marry for love, not convenience. And if Uther thinks an unhappy king makes for a stronger kingdom, then he's wrong because you may be destined to rule Camelot but you have a choice... as to how you do it.

Why Are All My Relatives Such... Twats?

Having recently finished Jane Goes Batty (which I may rant/rave about soon), and with the timely-yet-unexpected random inspirational quote from one of my dear friends, I find myself compelled to follow in the footsteps of scholars and fans far more deserved than I to explore the realm of what many consider the anti-Brontë: Jane Austen.
One might surmise that my overall disdain for two-thirds of the Brontë sisters would create an automatic enjoyment of all works Austen. Sorry to disappoint, dear quick-to-judge readers, but I find Miss Jane flawed as well, though admittedly not with the kind of vehement passion I aim at her Byronic successors. Still, on the whole (and though I have not read all their works), I do gain more personal enjoyment and find more intriguing and worthwhile in Jane's writing than in Charlotte's or (*hurk*) Emily's.
The quote which helped spur on this Austen topic quite took me as both accurate and bitingly amusing:
Apparently to have an Austen-esque romance, your family must be filled with twats.
(Texts from my friends are not, I think, like most people's texts... also, at least in my circle, 'twat' seems to be making a much needed comeback.)

While at first glance the assessment holds true to the 'it's funny because it's true' adage, both for works of Austen and those who hunger to emulate her, on reflection it caused pondering of classic feminine literature in general and how applicable this statement may be.
First, with Austen, it rather amuses me that by all accounts her own family was quite stable and satisfactory, if a little wanting for financial stability. Yet the heroines in most of her novels must deal with family (or those who may become family) who exemplify twattiness while on their individual journey to personal (and matrimonial) bliss.
Obviously Lizzie has to put up with not only her own but Darcy's atrocious relations (I'm looking at you, Aunt Lady Catherine de Twatourge). Twatilicous Lydia even ends up marrying a complete asshat, and I still wonder who got the worst end of that deal: her or Wickham. Even the almost nauseatingly perfect Jane and Bingley must contend with Charles' complete twat of a sister. No wonder Caroline so longs to be in Darcy's family -- she and Aunt Twatty would be the Twats of the Town. And in an informal facebook poll, my friends unanimously crowned Mr. Collins as the King Twat of Pride & Prejudice.
Then we have poor Fanny whose own immediate family pawns her off on her rich relatives at an age where her female cousins can be expected to shat on her like their pet puppies do on the front lawn. Then of course we have the Twat Twins who seduce various members of the Bertram family and end up exposing the fact that Edmund and Fanny are about the only respectable people in that circle -- and even they almost get duped and seduced by the Cunty Crawfords (yeah, I said it).
Similar patterns of familial twattery appear in Emma, Sense & Sensibility and (at least the parts I've read) of Northanger Abbey. The only Austen work which I am almost completely unfamiliar with is Persuasion but I would wager the twat theme queefs mightily in that novel as well.

Still, on my brief contemplation of female literature in general, Jane is not exempt from familial twatishness as a plot device. Miss Charlotte created an epic family of twats with the Reeds, and even the boorish Emily ensured her characters would never see happiness due to their über-twat relatives (of which Heathcliff and Catherine both suffer from and then become themselves). Yes, even my Brontë goddess Anne enlisted the family twat device in The Tenant of Wildfell Hall (though Gilbert's family of twats pales in comparison to Helen's husband and Lord Twat, Arthur Twatingdon).
While not 'feminine' literature, She Who Has More Money Than Everyone Else In The World Combined (aka Jo Rowling) excels at using FamTwat. Though young adult literature is steeped in twat tea, few families twat it up as well or as much as the Dursleys or the Malfoys (when your parents' names are Lucius and Narcissa, you're pretty much guaranteed a twatty childhood and thus becoming a top class twat yourself).

Obviously this is not a plot epidemic limited to female authors (Shakespeare was king of family twats), but from one little text I find yet another way to examine feminine literature and authors. I know Familial Twats: Exploring Twatticism in Post-Colonial British Female Authors probably won't garner me any academic accolades or grant money, but it is very interesting as a topic and damn fun to write about... or maybe I just like finding new ways to use 'twat.'

Coming Soon:
Coping with Twats Leads to Bliss? -- how the twatty behaviour of literary families correlates to the ultimate happiness of their protagonist relatives.

Fiction Battle

Or: Why snobbery in any form only makes you look like a douche...

The Death Flu cramped my writing for over a week, no doubt about it. While my brain functioned on occasion and I wrote more than before I caught the Death Flu, little of it felt substantive to me. With the exception of the migraine rant, I wrote because I felt I needed to but the passion behind the writing, the drive that keeps me going, was simply lost in the sea of a mind clouded with phlegm.
I’d like to thank Joe Hill for breaking me of my malaise. After a series of tweets which delivered the right amount of snark and disdain for an article on literary versus genre fiction (in which he advised readers not to seek out the originating article), I caved and followed the desire to seek out this supposed atrocity.
To say that it bothered me would be a bit of an understatement. It’s not entirely the content of the article but the tone that drives me to imaginings of strangling this writer with his own pompous ascot, which I envision he wears just to keep his inflated head from floating off his body. Yes, I resorted to cheap jibes. I suppose I’m just not ‘literary’ enough to appreciate his pompous, condescending, insulting tone as it relates to the general reading populous.
However, in reading this article I found my way to this one which, while it doesn’t entirely refute Mr. Pompousity does point out that readership and acceptance is a two-way street. Just as an article slamming all fiction that isn’t literary makes one seem like a giant douche, a retort which only serves to praise the mass consumption of Grisham and Steel books and casts aspersions on meriting works of literary fiction for being too high-brow makes that critic seem like the giant douche’s hillbilly cousin – who’s still descends from the family of Lord and Lady Douchebag.
The writer of the second article sees merit in both types of literature, and the problems inherent in either side dismissing the other for either pandering to the common folk or targeting only the upper echelon that sneers at the fiction of the plebes.
“I understand that everyone has different tastes, but there is no pride in ignorance of literary fiction. Genre writers can learn from literary fiction, just as literary writers can learn from genre fiction. There's a middle ground.”
Now that is an anti-snobbery statement I can stand behind.

I won’t pretend that I do not place labels on certain types of fiction based on my own personal tastes. However, I will say that for me great fiction, regardless of status, is about a compelling story, engaging characters, and a mark of creativity. A lack in any one of these areas does not discount the book for me as an example of poor writing or storytelling because each of those qualifiers contains no small amount of subjectivity. Still, if my interest is not captured you’re probably going to lose my investment in your writing – and even high-brow writers of the highest caliber get props from me even if your writing (and subsequent acceptance into the bourgee canon) frustrates this little pixie because all I got from your story was an intense need to throw your book across the room. Unless you’re Emily Brontë, even a violent reaction still merits note because it provoked thought. I’m not a huge fan of LitFic, but I’d rather be incensed at your pompous popularity than bored to tears by your drivel.

Still, if you want my respect, be a good writer, a good critic and an anti-snob. In simple words: Don’t be a douche.

I'll never be cookies.... yay?

Still trying to decide if this quote is inspiring or depressing... or perhaps both.

If you write a story today, and you get up tomorrow and start another story, all the expertise that you put into the first story doesn't transfer over automatically to the second story. You're always starting at the bottom of the mountain. So you're always becoming a writer. You're never really arriving.

EDWARD P. JONES

Throwaway the Year

"Is 'all right' special Timelord code for 'really not all right at all?'"
"Why?"
"'Cause I'm all right, too."

Agreeing with this post, I would like to offer a big FUCK. YOU. to this past year. January came and went leaving me jobless and stressed with a show. Oh yes, and began a still-ongoing purgatory of not knowing whether I can stay in my home as my landlords endeavor to sell the property. February graciously gave me a new job with friends who have become closer and co-workers who have become friends. As stressful and anti-what-I-want-from-life as it is, I think what I am most thankful for this year is that job.
March acted as March always does - a hellacious reign of suck, topped off by the death of my grandmother, my last grandparent and my closest non-immediate relative. Yeah.
April brought about my largest tax bill yet, which I will likely be paying off for another two years since despite having a steady paycheck filed under the correct status (and including benefits), I'm deeper in debt now than I ever have been before. May brought more suckiness, though for all its failings and being the first year I haven't been home for my birthday, or to my second home up north, my birthday itself begat an awesome party with awesome people. June and July were passable, and I got to see my mom which eased the not going home in May travesty a bit. August through early November saw the most intense, grueling, impassioned theatre project I've ever been involved in... and the following month and a half have been spent attempting to recover from those four months, along with insanely busy times at work and some of the most turbulent emotional issues I've tried to cope with in years.
Yeah. 2010, you sucked. Big time. I will not miss you at all.
Yet for all your screwing me and the rest of the world over, there are a few items I will remember fondly:
Previously mentioned new job and all the new and expanded friendships
This blog
A new Doctor who (very thankfully) is truly fantastic
The Huntington
Celebrations at the house -- and a house to have celebrations in
Friendship
Writing as an escape when I needed it most

So here's what I intend for 2011. Following with long-standing tradition I have a few goals, resolutions if you must:
Write more
Read more
Create more
Find more positivity in life
Trust my instincts more
Plus a couple I won't mention here

More than these goals, however, what I will endeavor to do is shake off this past year. The universe has ever-delighted in playing games with me and continually screwing over myself and those I care most about. What it is about me that carries the target for 'step on me, crush me, screw me over, and laugh all the while' which fate continues to hit with deadly accuracy I may never know. I do know this, though: whatever hell occurs, it can always get worse and instead of dealing with it or ignoring it, next year I intend to act in the form of my namesake, my astrological sign, and my general personality... I intend to fight back. I do not expect anything in my life to get easier or better; I've learned enough to know that's not my lot in life. However, as I've learned with time and progress and experience, being upset, depressed, accepting, etc. for me are unproductive emotions. Being pissed on the other hand, that gives me fire. It gives me energy and passion, planning and action.
2010, you fucked with me like no other. 2011, you're about to get fucked.

Yeah, that's my pep talk.

Happy Fucking New Year!

Welcome to the company, Mary Poppins...

Always attempted and always failed. I doubt this year will be different, yet I still keep trying. The goal is: each day during the month of October to watch one horror movie or show. I have plenty of stock, and now with DVR even more to choose from. I've never been able to succeed at every day, and I know this year won't be any different, but progress tracking seems as though it may be helpful.

Day one: Jekyll.

This is one of the first series I remember watching on BBCAmerica once I had DirecTV installed in my very first, very own place.

Every time I watch it I find something new to entertain, frighten, enlighten, amuse and inspire. Right now I'm invigorated by the clippy dialogue, brilliant industrial-meets-Glass-horror score, and Michelle Bloody Ryan. I mean, damn, that is one gorgeous woman. Then again, my girl crush and adoration fades as soon as she's off screen and James Nesbitt gets to go full on let's-play-lions crazy. I'll get to Nesbitt and his brilliance at a later time.
Michelle Ryan captures a perfect balance between intelligent, professional, strong young woman and yet emotionally vulnerable and a victim of unrequited love with the 'sane' persona of her bosses. And yeah... she's smoking hot.
The music alternates between an eerie choral motif and an industrial, yet sometimes piano-driven, creepfest. It's deceptively simple and affecting in the moment -- one of those scores you think works at the time but you won't ever think of again. That's what the music wants you to believe. I've dreamt about this music, had delicious nightmares fueled by it. If there's one thing I love about music in British series, it's that they don't muck around with it. It's as much a part of the production as plot, writing, casting, directing, editing, etc. This makes for some truly amazing British compositions in their shows, and for horror-drama scores it's hard to beat this one.
The writing is... well, I'm biased when it comes to Steven Moffat. However, there's a solid, strong reason for that: he's a brilliant writer. The whole arc of this series screams of genius, but added to that is some incredible character development and stunning dialogue. While I can't imagine any other actors in the main roles on this show, I know that even competent performers could make gold with these words -- it's just that well done.
For now, let me say that if you have not seen this revitalization of Stevenson's tale and world, you are missing out on one of the best horror re-imaginings out there. I haven't yet been able to see Moffat's recent Sherlock Holmes adaptation, but with Jekyll as his maiden voyage into this genre I'm very excited for it. I know that to talk this up so much only sets it up for failure in the sense that not everyone views the universe, the horror genre, or British television as I do. Yet I have trouble believing that anyone who enjoys the Brits, twisted dark humour, classic horror themes, solid acting, great writing and/or psychopaths who slaughter lions with their bare hands and then sing "The Lion Sleeps Tonight" might dislike this series...

"Ever killed anyone before, Benjamin?"
"Not personally. I have people."
"You're missing out. It's like sex only there's a winner."

Stop talking. Brain thinking. Hush.

Lack of blog posts indicates lack of mental capability to focus thoughts enough to have coherent opinions that don't turn into tangental ramblings. Then this line popped into my head after telling myself to focus for about the eight-hundredth time. It caused me to realize that, to continue quoting, time is not the boss of me. Too often I think in terms of deadlines (usually self-imposed), or needs that aren't actually needs, and allow these things to distract from what I want to do -- which is write, or create -- to have an outlet beyond escapism that is actually productive. This balance becomes increasingly difficult to find with a full-time job during the day and the bulk of the remainder of my hours consumed by a show. Still, if you don't carve out time for yourself to write, even if it has to come in brief, stolen moments, nothing gets accomplished. Ever.
None of this comes as a revelation, but at times reminders are necessary to return focus to what really matters, what satisfies the inner-creator.
So this is my little shout-out for myself and anyone else whose buried under too many 'other' aspects of life keeping them from doing what they truly want to be doing: take some time to deal with whatever must be dealt with, then take the time to push it all away, focus on yourself, ask yourself what you WANT to be doing at that moment and indulge. Give yourself permission to write or play music or dance or draw or otherwise engage your mind creatively for a while. The rest of your life will still be there when you return, but you'll be more refreshed and confident you can handle it all -- because you can. And you can do it without sacrificing your creative outlets.
Be good to yourself and your creative mind -- because there's only one you, and if you don't create the kind of art or writing or theatre or film or world-at-large you want to live in, who will?

Important Quotage

As you may soon notice, I am a quote whore.
(My future self just came back through a crack in time and space to tell me that yes, indeed, in the future it has been established across the stars that I have a penchant for quoting -- especially when stuck on my own words and unable to create or express something meaningful... I guess it's old news, then.)

Thus I thought I'd take this opportunity to expound on my choice of header quote for this blog.

I am at a loss to conceive how a man should permit himself to write anything that would be truly disgraceful to a woman, or why a woman should be censured for writing anything that would be proper and becoming for a man.

The quote is from Anne Bronte, part of the preface to the second edition of The Tenant of Wildfell Hall. For those unaware, when the Bronte sisters wrote their novels, they were all published under male pen names. This preface was written in the voice of Acton Bell, wherein 'he' explains some of the reasoning behind characters and events in the book that were seen to be shocking - namely a woman escaping her marriage to an absolute cad to save herself and her son, then trying to make a life for herself in a new town as a single mother. Horrors! (No. Really. To the Victorians that was horrific.) Other insinuations at the time had also been made that Acton and his brothers Currer and Ellis were, in fact, women (and possibly even all the same person). A fact that was never made officially public until after Acton/Anne and Ellis/Emily's deaths. While playfully not acknowledging the accusation of her gender, she points out, more accurately, succinctly and with a smidge of attitude than anyone prior to herself I have seen, that an author's gender should have no bearing on their writing or how it is judged. If a story, characters, and/or writing is good, then it is good no matter who wrote it. Because I love it so much, here is the whole paragraph:

Respecting the author's identity, I would have it to be distinctly understood that Acton Bell is neither Currer nor Ellis Bell, and therefore let not his faults be attributed to them. As to whether the name be real or fictitious, it cannot greatly signify to those who know him only by his works. As little, I should think, can it matter whether the writer so designated is a man, or a woman, as one or two of my critics profess to have discovered. I take the imputation in good part, as a compliment to the just delineation of my female characters; and though I am bound to attribute much of the severity of my censors to this suspicion, I make no effort to refute it, because, in my own mind, I am satisfied that if a book is a good one, it is so whatever the sex of the author may be. All novels are, or should be, written for both men and women to read, and I am at a loss to conceive how a man should permit himself to write anything that would be truly disgraceful to a woman, or why a woman should be censured for writing anything that would be proper and becoming for a man.

Preach on, dear lady.

The Universe Giveth...

The Universe Giveth...

Me something to rant about to distract me from the problems of life.

Dracula, My Love - Gag Me with a Stake

(We now have Emma and the Vampires, as well)

I don't even know where to start with the wrongness... The sad truth is I will read it. I will probably even buy it when it's released. However, that doesn't keep me from wanting to scream to the heavens: WHY DO YOU KEEP LETTING PEOPLE RUIN MY FAVORITE BOOK?!?!
I'm sure there's a not-small group of Austenites who feel the same way about so many re-imaginings of her novels (supernatural or otherwise), and I want you to know that as much as these reworks entertain me, I feel your pain. Really. Feel. It.
It's not that someone holds a different perspective on the novel and wants to express and explore that perspective. That's cool. Get down with your own biased opinion. What is not cool to me is the continual breaking down of the characters and themes in this novel and warping them into something completely different than what Stoker wrote.
To change one character changes them all -- this is something I have seen in EVERY re-working of the novel I've read. The characters changed most often from their book persona are Van Helsing and Dracula. I get that, to a point, for those who want to make both characters seem a little less archaic (though that is kind of the point in the novel anyway). However in instances such as this, what possesses me to throw a grand mal hissy is crafting a story in which Dracula is set up as a romantic hero (or even anti-hero). The amount of *headdesking* this inspires in me gives me headaches, because here's the thing: DRACULA. IS. EVIL.
He's not a tortured soul looking for redemption. He's not a crestfallen former warrior wanting to return to the good old days of having multiple wives and (literally) spiking dignitaries (OK, maybe a little bit of that one). He's not a seductive, sexy creature of the night who just wants to love and be loved. He's an evil sonofabitch who, not satisfied with continuing the barbarous ways he engendered during his 'youth,' seeks to make a new life in a new country where he can blend in and kill at will without having to worry about interference from pesky, superstitious gypsies... and if he gets to make a few companions to go tearing through the English countryside and bustling London with as well, so much the more fun.
The concept that the human heroes and sheroes of Stoker's novel could be so enchanted by Dracula that they begin to love him is utterly ridiculous. Yes, Skippy (aka Jonathan Harker) may not have the biggest brain or the most common sense, but he does improve as the novel goes on, and more than anything he improves greatly once the life of his beloved is at stake (no pun intended). Mina is a devoted wife, a new woman in more ways than she realizes, and not the sort of person to abandon her husband -- or even contemplate abandoning him -- to make time with the creepy foreigner who killed her best friend for sport.
Dracula's motives are simple: kill people, take up residence in England and blend in... so he can kill more people. The other characters have far more complex motivations which drive them to hunt down Dracula (as if stopping a mass murderer who kills and transforms a woman all the main characters love into a soulless, bloodsucking fiend isn't motive enough). Above everything else their motives are driven forward most forcefully by love. Not pity, not jealousy, not even revenge that they have every right to desire. They destroy Dracula because he is a plague that threatens not only them but everyone in England, and the world.
I can stomach a lot of tweaks and silliness people write about in regards to the themes in Dracula. Yet I always draw the line in two specific areas: evil and love/sex. Anytime someone tries to devalue the passionate, evolved take on good versus evil and/or attempts to turn every glance or suggestive word into an orgy, I instinctively leap on my soapbox and turn into a screaming nutter.
The sad truth is people today want to relate everything to a sexual act or feeling when they cannot understand a motivation (and I'm not just talking everyday folk here, I've seen people with advance degrees in literature pull this BS). This reduction in the value of platonic human bonds makes me more than sad, it makes me livid and depressed. The even sadder (and frankly, scarier) truth is that society now deems it irregular and bizarre to hold a belief in such an idea as evil. Everything needs an explanation or motive other than a sinful desire (and really I use sinful as a contextual word to encompass a concept many people no longer believe in, not necessarily reflecting a religious connotation... because I could use a word like 'taboo' and easily be misunderstood further).
Due to my riled, frenetic mind at the insanity of these 'beliefs' I am drawn, as usual, to words someone else wrote that express an idea better than I can do at present.

Methos: Do you really think there's no such thing as evil?
Fake: Only fear.
Methos: So what? Genghis Khan and Hitler were just children playing up?
Fake: They were men, driven by fear to commit evil acts.
Methos: And if their mothers had loved them truly, it would have been a different world.

Right, because genocide fueled by blind hatred is not evil. It's just fear.

If you believe that, then you probably do believe Dracula isn't such a bad guy and deserves to be loved...