Talk:Dracula

Dracula's guest section

This seems a bit confusing: "a wolf then emerges through the blizzard and attacks him. However, the wolf merely keeps him warm and alive until help arrives." If the wolf does indeed attack Harker, it doesn't "merely" keep Harker warm. Attacking someone is a bit more than just keeping them warm and alive. I suggest this should be rephrased. -95.34.0.173 (talk) 15:10, 30 August 2009 (UTC)

Sequel

Bram Stoker's great-grand-nephew Dacre Stoker and direct-to-DVD-Slasher-film-writer Ian Holt's sequel "The Undead" is only one of many many so-called sequels to "Dracula." As Dracula is public doman, Dacre and Holt have no more claim to the title of 'actual sequal' than any other writers. I think it is wrong to include their book and no others in this article. Perhaps the best thing would be to move any mention of any so-called 'sequels' to the "Dracula in Pop Culture" article. BoosterBronze (talk) 21:20, 27 October 2009 (UTC)

I agree, I think at least we should move the external link for the undead site from the dracula page to the dracula undead page. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 74.73.190.249 (talk) 19:17, 15 January 2010 (UTC)

The section on BACKGROUND of the novel "Dracula" doesn't need to include any refrence to a distant relative of Stoker's attempt to write a sequel a century later. It's irrelevant and gives undue weight to the otherwise hardly notable novel "Dracula The Undead." BoosterBronze (talk) 15:54, 18 March 2011 (UTC)

Certainly the information that was in there saying they did so try reclaim creative control over the original character was misleading in suggesting that such a thing were possible. DreamGuy (talk) 18:50, 19 March 2011 (UTC)

Draculea

It says clearly in the "Search for Dracula" book, and in Romania, the Romanians themselves attest that the proper diminutive is Draculea and not Dracula. Dracula would be the feminine version. I know this wont change the article or suddenly cause all the books and movies to be re-written or retitled. It is a spelling error similar to the one for Aluminum Aluminium, one that caught on and now we're stuck with it. i only bring it up because it's a FACT and this is supposed to be an encyclopedia. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 70.113.49.126 (talk) 19:37, 15 January 2010 (UTC)

Inclusion of Republic of Ireland in biographical section

I'm responding to a comment left by an anon editor on my talk page here. Evidently this editor is unhappy about the inclusion of the ROI in the bio box, since the ROI did not exist at the time the novel was published. Perhaps we can have a brief discussion as to how to deal with this info. I feel that the addition of this geographical detail is useful, since Stoker was born in what is now the ROI. There has been an earlier discussion here, but this didn't seem to address this specific issue. Any thoughts? Thanks. Malljaja (talk) 01:35, 16 May 2010 (UTC)

Its not that am unhappy, it just seems rather historically inaccurate and the edit has been reverted twice on the grounds of concensus has been reached to the contary - that i have yet to find. Is the same been done for the countless other works that have been released in one nation that have subsequently broken away or became part of a new nation?86.4.87.120 (talk) 11:11, 16 May 2010 (UTC)

Dracula's Guest section 2

In reference to the current disagreement over the amendments made to the Dracula's Guest section (made by me), and in response to MarnetteD's queries, allow me to elucidate. Using "Englishman" is more correct than "Harker" because there is an age-old debate as to whether or not the character in the story IS actually Jonathan Harker. There is no conclusive answer, so using the non-specific "Englishman" is best. Using the word "vampiress" is not essential, but it is a term used freely in the Gothic/horror genre nowadays and I thought it was appropriate where I used it. However, the most important amendment I made was regarding the apparition of the wolf to the Englishman in the wilderness. The former description was unspecific and somewhat inaccurate (the wolf did not "emerge through the blizzard" nor "attack" the Englishman). My amendment improved the accuracy of the description significantly, though I too made a minor error (describing the Englishman as being forced to sleep in the forest for the night, which now seems a slight exaggeration, as it was a brief period of unconsciousness lol.) However, I shall see to correcting this directly. 81.178.250.247 (talk) 01:22, 12 September 2010 (UTC)

Thank you for clearing up "The Englishman" usage. However, vampiress was not used in the story and is not widely used in the numerous vampire tales being produced today. MarnetteD | Talk 01:31, 12 September 2010 (UTC)

If there are users here who feel that the Dracula's Guest section is written in a "clunky" way (I felt it rude to say, but I thought the section was rather clumsily written when I first read it), then by all means do your best to de-clunkify it with your masterly skills in writing prose. But please do not simply revert it to a former version that contains inaccurate and missing details when I have made the effort to research and amend them. 81.178.250.247 (talk) 03:24, 12 September 2010 (UTC)

As the contributor who reverted your edit, I'd like to explain why I did so. For some reason this entry is quite prone to vandalism or haphazard additions especially by anon IPs. I do appreciate that you want to add some more (although minor) detail here, so I'd suggest that you use a user name in the future, which could help elicit a more meaningful dialogue. Having said this, I stand by my statement that your edits are poorly worded: for example, "he is dragged away by an unseen force and rendered unconscious" has several problems both in style and content. To "render unconscious" needs an active subject doing the rendering (if you insist on this phrasing) and "unseen force" begs the question, by whom this force is unseen? The Englishman, the reader, another party present, but not mentioned? This doesn't call for any masterly prose, but for plain English. Since it's been a good while since I read this short novel, I cannot check the accuracy of the content, but I do feel that this section does not read well. Given that it only adds some very minor details, I therefore have reservations to leave it in this way. Thanks. Malljaja (talk) 22:40, 12 September 2010 (UTC)

We are not writing a best-selling novel here, but a concise synopsis of a short story in encyclopedic format. Therefore, issues such as "active subjects" and to whom the force is "unseen" seem quite pedantic and ultimately inconsequential. (By the way, isn't it obvious that the force is unseen by the character in the story? Realistically who else would it be referring to? And who is seriously going to scrutinise this in a synopsis anyway?) 217.206.76.157 (talk) 15:39, 13 September 2010 (UTC)

Malljaja, whilst I agree with you that the section doesn't read like Shakespeare, I think it remarkable that you find my edits alone to be below par and presumably the crux of what's wrong with the section. Other parts of the section read far worse than mine. For example, "The short story climaxes in an old graveyard, where in a marble tomb (with a large iron stake driven into it), the Englishman encounters..." is a glaring mess of sentence structure that seems to have escaped your critical eye (it should read "where the Englishman encounters (the vampiress) in a marble tomb, etc"). Another would be "This malevolent and beautiful vampire awakens from her marble bier to conjure a snowstorm before being struck by lightning and returning to her eternal prison..." which is far too much information crammed into one sentence. Having re-read the sentence that most displeases you, "the Englishman's troubles are not quite over, as he is dragged away by an unseen force and rendered unconscious...", I do feel that your first concern about the absence of an active subject doing the "rendering" is pedantic - one might even say the absence of a subject is appropriately vague, because the moment in the short story is similarly vague and unclear, as we don't know who or what it is that has dragged the Englishman away and rendered him unconscious. Secondly, Bram Stoker's writing seems to imply that the "unseen force" is invisible to all, so that neither the Englishman, the reader, nor any voyeurs present at the scene would perceive it. I thought this was perfectly clear when I re-read the sentence I wrote, but if users want greater specification, they can always proceed to the Dracula's Guest article, which provides far more in-depth details. I encourage you to have a go at improving the style and content of the section if you wish, but I might suggest re-reading Dracula's Guest first so that you can accurately identify where the problems lie. Thank you. 81.178.253.108 (talk) 19:23, 13 September 2010 (UTC)

Archiving

Because edit summaries are limited let me post here. I archived a large chunk of conversations, some that went as far back as 07, today. I know that there is a way to archive into the talkheader but I have never known how to do this. Thus, I added an archive box template - to be honest I actually prefer these because the archive in the talkheader can be missed with all of the other info that is there. If any of you don't like this and want to move archive #2 into the talkheader please feel free to do so. My second thought was "Do we want to set up a bot to arc--JayJasper (talk) 19:14, 6 October 2010 (UTC)hive this page automatically?" That would prevent having as many stale conversations on the page as I found today. I have never worked with these bots so if consensus is to use a bot please set this up with my thanks. MarnetteD | Talk 18:51, 6 October 2010 (UTC)

Problem solved. To archive, you have to create a separate page.--JayJasper (talk) 19:01, 6 October 2010 (UTC)

Thanks JayJasper. Did you have any thoughts about bot archiving? If not no worries and cheers. MarnetteD | Talk 19:09, 6 October 2010 (UTC)

You're quite welcome, glad to be of assistance. As for bot archiving, that might not be a bad idea, given that there were threads dating as far back as '07 that weren't archived until today.--JayJasper (talk) 19:14, 6 October 2010 (UTC)

Films that "include a reference"

I removed the following bit:

The number of films that include a reference to Dracula may reach as high as 649, according to the Internet Movie Database.

I have no idea what "include a reference" is supposed to mean exactly, and the passage doesn't tell me. Is it including Dracula as a character? Or just mentioning Dracula off-hand? Is it something else? This isn't very useful as is. Ekwos (talk) 05:54, 11 November 2010 (UTC)

Agree with removal. There will be some more coherent discussion of the number of dracula movies somewhere in some authoritative book on horror cinema. Casliber (talk · contribs) 10:14, 11 November 2010 (UTC)

I also concur with its removal. Not all films involving vampires refer to Dracula and there is a distinct possibility that the number in the old info might include some of these. Thanks for the removal and for the clarifying post here. MarnetteD | Talk 17:14, 11 November 2010 (UTC)

Plot summary

Poorly written. The verb tenses jump everywhere and the overall summary doesn't flow well. 76.10.151.90 (talk) 05:07, 25 August 2011 (UTC)