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calliopes_pen) wrote2020-01-02 01:00 pm
calliopes_pen) wrote2020-01-02 01:00 pm
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The Yuletide 2019 Commentary Post
-Ao3 claims the story is 38,879 words. By my calculations, it was 38,834 words (or 38,836 with the words The End factored in). It doesn’t make much of a difference, really. Sean and I edited this down to the wire, on Christmas Eve. And this is a rare case where there are no deleted scenes whatsoever, so far as I can recall.
-Other potential titles for the story were: We Enter The Circle At Night. The Nightcomers. Bless The Night. Embrace The Night. Temper Your Sin With Love. The Shadows On The Wall. Only the first two really became serious contenders, aside from what I went with.
-The origin of the title of The Living Sea of Waking Dreams is the poem I Am, by John Clare. I read that line in it, and then immediately wrote Mina pondering things in the graveyard. From there, it crystallized and started going through the story in various places.
-Before I started writing this story, I almost wrote several others. However, it felt as though it would be longer than the time I had permitted. I went back and forth on an AU route, vs. post-film route. Both involved werewolves. In the former, it would have included Lucy in the chaos of Jonathan and Dracula as werewolves, though she would only be seen at the end, and would have survived.
In the post-film idea: It was of Jonathan becoming a werewolf and being stalked by the one that bit him, and his struggles and everyone else’s as they seek to free him from the curse. It’s all been plotted out. It has a title, and I know how it would definitely end. Somewhere down the line when my brain is recovered from Yuletide, it might actually be written.
-Seward’s housekeeper, Mrs. Hoskins, accidentally became Mrs. Hopkins for a while. I caught the issue. It just isn’t Yuletide without name confusion.
-Mr. Smollet rescues everyone from the graveyard in the fanfic. In the novel, Joseph Smollet was one of the guys carting the boxes of earth to Carfax, whom Renfield attacks. Quincey Morris was used for Wrap The Cloak Of Night Around His Shoulders, so I used him again (working for Mrs. Weston in this appearance, though neither story is connected) when Mina needs a ride pre-Lucy resurrection.
-Once they returned to Weston House at the end of chapter 1, Jonathan and Mina didn’t get any sleep. It was more attempted mundane explanations for the people not in the know, and everyone talking to Jonathan about his recollections the rest of the day. Seward eventually got out when the fog cleared just enough, and managed to keep a search party from forming for Jonathan before he got down to snipping through all the red tape.
-As a joke, Thistletwaite was suggested for the name of the chemist and actually stuck around for a long while since I thought it sounded good. In the end, after consulting Whitby Online, I went with Brooks And Co. It seemed to fit the region better.
-I kept going back and forth between Tenebrae and Tenebre and Tenebraeum for the first inscription on the ring. I finally went with the first instead of the last. I stumbled across In girum imus nocte et consumimur igni (‘We enter the circle at night and are consumed by fire.’) when I was searching for something that fit, that related to darkness or something similar. Carpe Noctem was rejected as not being ominous enough. Dracula had a strange sense of humor and apparently someone in his service that was great at engraving in order to fit all that in.
-The Nightcomers is not a phrase relating to vampires. Instead, I only have found it in relation to a 1971 movie with Marlon Brando, which was a prequel to Turn of the Screw. However, it did inspire me for part of Mina’s spell, because it could sound like something someone might term a vampire.
-Mina might have avoided getting possessed (even if it was okay, technically, being Lucy) if she had done a circle of protection. She just chose not to, perhaps influenced by the Count, or by her own encroaching need to be with Lucy.
-A moment at the end of chapter 2 was inspired by a toast that Lucy recited in Dracula (1931). From the movie: "Lofty timbers, the walls around are bare, echoing to our laughter as though the dead were there... Quaff a cup to the dead already, hooray for the next to die." (You can find it here, at 3:17) While I did consider her actually raising a toast as Mina drained Seward, it didn’t feel like a good moment. Lucy and Jonathan were eagerly taking in the show more than in the mood to toast.
-Mrs. Weston probably mourned Mina and Jonathan, even if she never knew what became of them. And who out there will get the woman her laudanum? Probably Mrs. Perkins. I can see her taking charge when everyone disappears. I also considered having Mrs. Weston insist that Jonathan call her by her first name in chapter 2, but I’ve gone that route before, with her insisting such to Mina in Wrap The Cloak of Night Around His Shoulders.
-When Mina enslaves Jonathan, a bit of it references when the blood exchange happened in the novel. Mostly the crossing land and sea line. In chapter 5, the comment of “You are first and more shall follow” is an altered line referencing the novel. Granted, there it was one of the brides talking, while here it’s just Jonathan commenting Seward will be the first victim of the ladies.
-I actually researched for the type of porridge Jonathan would eat and how Victorians made it, just for one line. If anyone is curious, he likes it with marmalade.
-At the end of chapter 2, the maid that Jonathan and Mina pass in the hall: I almost gave her the name of Marya in reference to Dracula’s Daughter (1936), but as she doesn’t have a speaking part in the story, felt it wasn’t needed. I also considered having Mina lose control and bite her, but decided it was best for her to wait for Seward. Instead, Jonathan feels her hunger rising.
-Originally, I considered having Jonathan and Mina knock together. However, that first writing didn’t mesh well, as Jonathan and Mina awkwardly stand around, waiting for an invitation from Seward; Jonathan would have quietly and obviously begun to panic when the words weren’t stated. And then I had the idea of him literally taking a tumble to gain the invitation, and rewrote pretty much that whole scene.
-The Munich Leichenhaus was referenced in Stoker’s original notes as a place that Jonathan would go prior to the castle. He would have seen a dead man that he then finds out went missing. That man would have been Dracula, since Jonathan later identifies him in London (also removed from the novel proper). This is my roudabout way of referencing it. It’s mentioned on this page of The Dracula Project, and here.
-If not for all the fog, I have the suspicion that Seward would have simply opened a window and gone off into the night in search of Van Helsing. And no, while she did stalk him, Lucy didn’t bite his driver.
-Seward’s comment (while attempting a distraction in chapter 5) about Mina potentially adding a bite mark to Jonathan’s wrist as a ploy is my particular way of referencing a moment I chose not to use in The Soft Whispers of the Dead. Over there, I once considered that Jonathan would be left with something like a stigmata of a bite on his wrist from the Count’s attentions, following the moment when the Count’s spirit is denied, and the servant exorcised.
In that story, Jonathan already had enough heaped on top of him, he didn’t need that sort of fear of being transformed without being possessed, too. However, it is an excellent question for Seward to bring up if he wants to distract them and reach his coat.
-“Not the devil; never that” can be considered a vague reference to the drawing room scene between Van Helsing and the Langella Dracula in Dracula (1979). There, it was “Oh, the devil!” “Not as bad as that.” It was inspired by that, at the very least. I just knew that if nothing else caused him to faint in the story—not the implications, not the knowledge he was trapped—then the sight of her resurrected and all of that emotion that remained most assuredly would do the trick.
-The tag I used of “so much for that hot tea and a blanket” was obviously inspired by Hoskins’ thought of “She had only heard a minor bit of discord; she had only presumed it was to eventually be a late night requiring hot tea and a blanket for her favourite doctor.”
-Originally, Seward’s awakening would have simply been him opening his eyes, and waving to the ladies. I rewrote the scene, and it turned into Seward/Mina, and the whole fledgling/sire thing that Mina had read about.
-The story would have originally ended with Seward attacking Mrs Hoskins, and draining her dry. It would have been Jonathan’s idea as he politely and creepily took the tea tray away from her, folded the napkins, took a bite of a snack and smiled at the vampires. Before she can scream, Seward is upon her, as the others smile with joy.
There was also a brief period of time where Jonathan would have also suggested that Seward turn Mrs. Hoskins, so that he could have someone to help him in the castle, with the cleaning. Because it’s too much for one man to clean and fend off those three vampires. It felt too odd to go that way, and I eventually concluded that someone would see reason lest Van Helsing get involved when four go missing, so Hoskins ends up mesmerized instead of dead. Or undead.
-Also, Seward is quite simply dangerous as one of the undead, once you factor in the skills of his profession. The incident with Jonathan is proof of that, and if he weren’t prevented by everyone, I can see him feasting on the occupants of the asylum just as he ponders.
-I sort of loved writing for the altered Jonathan. He’s just so gleeful with his servitude, and thinking it’s only proper that he offer his throat to the man that just tried to take his blood by force. He’s just so happy from his biting experience. I couldn’t help but also bring the logistical issues of vampirism with facial hair into play, too.
-Sanguis Vita Est. “Blood is life.” That line came when I wasn’t sure what the toast would involve on Seward’s part, and recalled that Latin that I almost used in another Dracula story. It felt like a suitable way of bonding them, even with the blood exchange.
-Yes, Jonathan will be turned after maybe two or three years of quality service, once they manage to catch someone else to serve them. Van Helsing will try to hunt them for a bit after their mentioned stunt, but doesn’t manage to catch them before a natural death. His protege knows him far too well to fall into any traps he could devise.
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I've done that, too!! *fistbumps of housekeeper solidarity*
And, thanks, it's always interesting to read your behind the scenes for the fic. And I like that poem; thanks for the link.
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And yeah, if anyone deserved hot tea and a blanket from the housekeeper, it would be Seward. Hoskins just couldn't know what she was walking into. (Also contemplated at one point, that if she'd brought a blanket along and not supposed one was already there, Jonathan could have used that to nicely cover up the body as they waited. Even if the vampire wouldn't feel the cold upon revival.)
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And, yes, I definitely had to do find and replace for that one on one of my stories if not more. It might have been the DW crossover I did last year, possibly? An easy mistake to make!!