Abraham Van Helsing...Marriage Counselor? Or What Happened After BRAM STOKER'S DRACULA

In late October, I watched the 1992 horror-romance classic Bram Stoker's Dracula for the film podcast Myopia Movies. After having watched the film, done the podcast, and reviewed a lot of discussion on TVTropes, I wondered what happens next? 

The film ends on ambiguous note--Dracula is mortally wounded by Quincy Morris (Billy Campbell) and Jonathan Harker (Keanu Reeves), but the latter's wife, the rapidly-vampirizing Mina (Winona Ryder), prevents them from finishing him at gunpoint. This is after having gone so far as to attempt to use sorcery (an ability she gained after drinking his blood far more willingly than in the novel) to prevent them from catching Dracula during daylight. She takes the dying vampire to Castle Dracula's long-disused chapel where he seems to repent of his wickedness, the light of God restores him to his human form, and Mina finishes him off. The scene is accompanied by voice-over narration that sounds like Mina's account written in her journal after the fact, so she survives the experience. 

However, there's still the awkward situation that she's married to Jonathan, whom she has all but cuckolded with a monster. TVTropes users point out that at minimum their relationship is on the rocks and less optimistic ones think it might never recover. This rather grim fan-fic depicts Mina coming out of the castle a sadder but wiser woman and then leaving Jonathan. Jonathan is left mourning the wreckage of his life, hoping Mina will return but privately doubting it.

(This could be Poor Communication Kills--Mina apparently left a note that he couldn't bear to read. For all we know, she was just letting him know she needed a week or two to ponder what had happened and she'll be back. She's got a lot to process, after all--her fiancé mysteriously disappears, her best friend Lucy sickens, Dracula in the guise of a handsome foreigner attempts to seduce her and half-convinces her she's his reincarnated wife, she breaks off a budding affair to quickly marry said fiancé when it turns out he's still alive, Lucy is killed by Dracula in a jealous rage and rises again as a monster, and then Dracula partially transforms her into a monster too. She flip-flops on helping her husband and friends kill Dracula to save her from darkness and ultimately it's her who redeems--and then kills--the vampire king after holding her husband and friends at gunpoint. At minimum, things are going to be really, really awkward.)

However, there's a much more cheerful alternative--marriage counseling with Abraham Van Helsing. After all, he's a doctor, he's eyewitness to the whole situation, and he's apparently very knowledgeable about vampirism (and theoretically what responsibility, if any, both parties have for their actions under the vampire's influence). Here's the relevant scene:

Note his extreme insensitivity, both toward Mina for Lucy's death and vampirism and Jonathan for his abuse by Dracula's brides. Jonathan was held captive for weeks and repeatedly fed upon (in an extraordinarily sexual fashion) to keep him from escaping, but he discusses this as though Jonathan had been unfaithful. This is not "infidelity" (Van Helsing's words), this is straight-up rape. Although in my rarely humble opinion Dracula set Mina up--using some kind of psychic ability (the memories of a past life she only remembers when he shows up and plies her with absinthe) on top of the simpler expedient of keeping her fiancé from her and feeding off her best friend to make her sexually frustrated and stressed out and vulnerable to his attentions--she still chooses poorly, whereas Jonathan has no choice at all. If he thinks Jonathan is an adulterer rather than a rape victim, he'd probably view Mina even less sympathetically, especially given how she turns on everybody at the movie's climax.

So...your fanfic plot, should you choose to accept it, is to tell the tale of Van Helsing providing marriage counseling to Jonathan and Mina after the events of the film. And using Van Helsing's extreme insensitivity and manic tendencies (seriously, watch the scene where he discusses Lucy's possible transformation into a vampire with her suitor Quincy Morris and humps Quincy's leg while referring to Lucy as "a bitch of the devil"), it should be as hilariously horrible (or horribly hilarious) as possible.

Guest Post: Where's Marion...Or Disposable Love Interests

By Kiti Lappi

In a discussion on Facebook a few days ago we got to talking about Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull - the Indiana Jones movie which should not have been in the opinion of lots of fans, it seems -  and one of the good points with that movie came up.

It brought Marion back. And even got her and Indy finally married. That there was a son was good too. Forget that he was played by THAT actor, just consider the idea that there is a next generation now. At least I like it, maybe because I don’t have any kids of my own and with my age there is now no chance of any, not natural ones anyway, and being one kind of dead end bothers me a bit. 

And even somebody like Indy, a character who IS tied to time unlike somebody like, say, James Bond, so he is supposed to age - it’s not nice to imagine him as a the cranky lonely old man next door, moving around with a cane or a walker and nobody knowing how cool he once was. Better to imagine him as the doting grandfather, telling stories of his exploits to the grandkids who are gathered around him and are watching with wide eyes and waiting with bated breath for him to tell how he got out of the snake pit that time.

But the biggie is still: They brought Marion back.

Why? Why does matter so much to me?

Personally, one aspect is that I like romance. Hey, I am a woman, so sue me. However I can’t stand most romance novels because hell of a lot of them - most I have read - spend way too much time with the endless will they or won’t they, does he really love, or even like her, how deep are her feelings for him, or describing what kind of sex they have when they get to it and forgetting what is the other nominal plot at times totally, and especially when that other plot is supposed to be kind of important, like a murder mystery or espionage or, hell, saving her business, or his, or the family farm, the characters spending inordinate amounts of time concentrating on how hot that other person is, whether to have sex, or wondering if he really cares, makes the whole thing feel more than a bit flakey to me. 

If there is a murderer on the loose and possibly coming after me you could drop the hottest male in the universe on my lap and I’d still spend at least somewhat more time trying to figure out who that killer is than admiring his total hotness and wondering what he maybe thinks of me (and trying to figure out whether to have sex…). Maybe I’m just quirky that way, or have low sex drive or whatever, but mostly those scenes make me want to grab the characters and shake them and point out that there are somewhat more important things happening around them. 

And keep love triangles far away from me, thanks. One at a time is complicated enough. 

So for me the go-to source for romance has always been all kinds of other stories with a romance subplot. Like the first Indiana Jones. Which was rather great as far as that part is concerned. You got that they knew each other, you got that there was history and previous problems, you got that they still had feelings - deep feelings - for each other, that they would not have ever gotten back together except for the circumstances which now forced them to. So would that be enough to bring them back together? He cared, she cared, but was their troubled history still too much for them? 

Then, exciting derring do and lots of action later they did get back together. Ooh, they really DO love each other. Now they just have to stay together, right? Wedding, family, adventures together before kids, and maybe adventures where that family gets threatened and they work together to save each other and their family and… OOH, I CAN’T WAIT!

Then next movie. No Marion. 

Okay, this was a prequel, and set for the period of time after their break up and before they met again. And Willie certainly was no match for her, so understandable that that affair never led to anything. 

And then there is the third movie. 

And… hey, where’s Marion? Why is Indy now flirting with that blonde? That story does pretty clearly take place later than the Ark one, so - what happened?

Of course the affair with Elsa doesn’t last, and ends very definitely, but he still has an affair with her. And as far as I remember there isn’t even a mention of Marion, no short discussion with Jones senior, for example, with him telling junior that he should have stayed with Marion, him answering that they just seemed to be incompatible or something and that she had left, or saying that they had a break up and he gave up too easily but is now going back and he WILL win her back because this showed him that she is the only one for him. 

But there is nothing. It’s pretty much as if she hadn’t even existed. 

And that definitely made the film less enjoyable for me, because I kept waiting for that explanation, even as a throwaway comment, of her absence. 

Now on some level I get it. The meeting, the attraction, the getting to know each other a bit and then the hero getting her favor, conquering her, during the story is exciting. And I suppose after that doesn’t seem as exciting, they now know each other, he has won her, what else is there to tell? Plenty, actually, but I suppose it could be a bit harder to make all that seem exciting. The meeting and wooing is easier.

So often enough in film series the female lead in each movie changes. Our hero meets and wins a new lady each time. 

But this revolving door of leading ladies makes a hero seem kind of shallow. Okay, often enough more like VERY shallow. Especially when each time the previous love of his life, or at least the last lust object, seems to be totally forgotten, not meriting even that throwaway line of how she, I don’t know, went back to her childhood sweetheart or had a too busy work schedule or how his job makes it too dangerous for him to commit to long term relationships and he is willing to risk only short affairs, or that maybe he was so badly scarred by losing the great love of his life that he no longer can go there. 

(Okay, at least they have tried to give that impression a few times in the James Bond franchise… better than nothing, I guess). 

The hero is a player, going through life having short, even if sometimes pretty intense affairs with countless women he seems to totally purge from his life and his memory afterwards. 

And at least for me that makes him seem rather less heroic. 

And then there always is that image of the hero as the lonely, cranky old man… not cool. Not at all.

I want the cool grandpa. And the young man who will fall in love, win his lady love and then KEEP her, through thick and thin, until death parts them. With at least one kid and then grandkids coming to the story at some point, whether that gets shown or not. 

Life Lessons from the Katy Perry/Russell Brand Divorce...

http://www.tmz.com/2012/01/01/katy-perry-divorce-russell-brand/

Found the above article while looking for stuff about the upcoming John Carter movie.

It's sad that this happened, but it does provide a valuable lesson.  The two of them didn't date for very long and due to their schedules, didn't spend a lot of time together.  Based on this article, it seems like the whole situation was driven by infatuation.  And they entered married life unaware of the impending land mines the article described--both being stubborn and unwilling to back down in arguments, or Perry being into parties while Brand being a homebody.

(Given Brand's history of drug addiction, I can understand why he'd want to avoid the club scene.)

Marriage is one of the most important decisions one will make in one's entire life and it should not be rushed into.  Had the two of them dated longer or spent more time together while they were dating, these issues could have been dealt with earlier or their relationship could have ended earlier when it would have been less painful and problematic for all involved.

(And from a Christian perspective, there's the moral issues of divorce and remarriage afterward, which is another can of worms entirely.  Bringing that issue into play and it makes the stakes even higher and getting to know the other person better and deal with any issues beforehand even more important.)

One Area Obama Holds An Insurmountable Advantage Over Gingrich

Here are some thoughts I recently had about the electability of Newt Gingrich.  Don't get me wrong--I think Gingrich is a very smart man and if he were to win the Republican nomination, I'd probably vote for him.

That being said, for Republicans interested in nominating a candidate who can beat Obama in 2012, there is one area where Obama has an insurmountable advantage, and that's the much-vaunted area of family values.

Barack Obama's personal life.

Newt Gingrich's personal life.

It would be very hard for Newt Gingrich to run as a candidate strong on family values with a personal life this...complex.  Especially since it's more than just adultery-divorce-remarriage-repeat--in a book I bought when I was in school entitled Inside Congress, on page 133 of the 1997 Pocket Books edition, it describes how poorly Gingrich provided for his then-wife and two daughters while they were legally separated. A local church had to start a collection to pay for the family's utility bills.  Gingrich was paying $700 per month to support his family and $400 per month on his food and dry cleaning alone.

All Obama needs to do is show he has been married to and remained faithful to one woman since 1992 and there have never been any problems providing for the children and Gingrich will take a major hit.  Especially since Obama has not come from an especially stable family himself--see this article by none other than Bill O'Reilly--and yet he has managed to avoid perpetuating the cycle of dysfunction that often plagues unhappy families.

Now, as a consequence of my religious views I'm a big believer that even the most evil people can change.  Gingrich has, among other things, converted to Catholicism, which is a fairly big break from his earlier religious background and something that likely cost him political support.  If this represents a genuine change of heart, God bless him.

However, though God will forgive a sinner who repents, actions still have consequences, and his prior behavior has made him very vulnerable in certain areas.  Gingrich might make a better Cabinet official or chief of staff or general purpose eminence grise for whoever ends up winning the GOP 2012 nod rather than as the candidate himself.

My Column About Donald Trump...

Rather than write a column about local issues, I have decided to dip my toe in the 2012 presidential waters.

Here's a column about Donald Trump:

http://www.northfulton.com/Articles-c-2011-05-03-187113.114126-sub-Donald-Trump-not-a-good-Republican-candidate-for-2012.html

Hopefully this will be an attack on Trump from an unexpected direction.  I've heard Trump criticized on other grounds, like his divorce from his first wife, his tendency to attach "Trump" to everything (that he even jokes about), and his hair, and those attacks can be answered.

The eminent domain abuse criticism, although Michelle Malkin and John Stossel have engaged in it, has not to my knowledge hit the general public's radar yet.  However, those two wrote against Trump years ago and he was not a viable candidate then.  Trump's record is, in all likelihood, getting more attention right now than in the past.

Hopefully this foolishness can be nipped in the bud before Trump gets the Republican nomination (and is likely defeated in a landslide by Obama) or runs as an independent, which could lead to the vote being split and the Democrat winning again.

For the record, if Trump wins the Republican nomination, I'm voting Libertarian.  Even though the Libertarians won't win and I've been somewhat less hostile toward government spending in recent years, Trump's abuse of eminent domain is antithetical to everything any self-respecting conservative (or for that many, any self-respecting liberal) stands for.

Some More Thoughts on "Camelot"

The more I think about the trailer for Starz's upcoming new show "Camelot," which I included in my last blog entry, the more I think about how well-thought-out some of the stuff depicted in the story is.

Firstly, Arthur's speech about how he will rule for the sake of the people.  One could argue this is some anachronistic proto-democratic attitude intended to create a more sympathetic protagonist (realism be damned), but there is another part of the trailer depicting Morgan dismissing Arthur as being "from common clay" and not from royalty.

If Morgan, despite being a woman, has the support of much of the nobility, Arthur appealing to the common people of the land makes sense.  The Byzantine emperors tended to support the peasantry against the aristocracy to keep the aristocrats from threatening the monarchy, even though the Byzantine Empire was a divine-right dictatorship.

Secondly, Morgan is depicted as being publicly Christian, wearing lots of crosses on her clothes.  Although she was raised in the royal court and is probably more politically savvy and well-connected than Arthur, the fact that she is a woman in a patriarchal pre-modern society makes her position somewhat weaker than if she were a man.  Public religiosity would make her more popular, especially with the commoners, and strengthen her political position.

Thirdly, Morgan is also depicted as getting freaky with someone, although I don't know enough about the supporting cast to make a judgment as to who it is.  If it isn't Arthur himself (the whole incest-to-produce-Mordred aspect of the story), it might be one of her noble supporters.  Her position as a successor to Uther Pendragon would be strengthened if she had a powerful consort.

No Pretteh Zerg Babiez! (Starcraft 2 Spoilers)

This blog entry is adapted from a post I made on Battle.net a few days ago.  Posting it here because I found on Google Analytics that at least one person came across my blog while searching "Raynor and Kerrigan child" or something like that.  The lolcats-esque title comes from something I saw on SCArmory, another Starcraft forum, about this topic.

On other Starcraft forums and to a limited degree on Battle.net itself, there are some people (probably the hardest-core Raynor/Kerrigan supporters) who think the two of them ought to have a kid now that Kerrigan has been de-infested (or "fumigated," as someone cleverly called it).  At least one person said this hypothetical kid would play some kind of messianic role in defeating the Dark Voice.

Is it just me, or would that be a really bad idea, both logically-speaking and story-wise?

Several reasons:

1. They're not married. Moral considerations aside, it would also be out-of-character for Raynor. Little Johnny Raynor (Raynor's son who died in what was in all likelihood the Ghost program, mentioned in the novel Liberty's Crusade) was born in wedlock, after all.

2. If they were ever officially a couple prior to New Gettysburg, it wasn't that long. Rushing into things of this nature is a very bad idea. Especially since going back to the way things were before Kerrigan was captured by the Zerg at New Gettysburg would be impossible (see below).

3. One word: Fenix. That's a really big elephant in the room. Plus, if something resembling Kerrigan's human personality is in charge post-deinfestation, she's going to be a mess.  She felt bad about calling the Zerg to attack the Confederates at Antiga Prime and objected strongly to Mengsk calling a much large group of Zerg in to attack the Confederate capital of Tarsonis.  She's going to look at what she did as the Queen of Blades and be thoroughly horrified. I imagine Raynor would be willing to be try to work this out, but still.

(And the "Queen of Blades" is in my opinion Kerrigan's unrestrained dark side, not some usurper entity using her body. Some aspect of the Queen was always there and will always be there--and it might well be stronger than it was before.)

4. They both have more important things to do right now.  Mengsk is still on the throne (and due to the revelations about Tarsonis, he's probably weakened enough to kick off it) and the first Hybrids have already arrived in the Sector. The End of Days is coming and it's coming soon.

5. Per my comment about coming soon, there won't be time for some red-headed telepathic redneck to become the Savior of the Sector.

6. Pregnancy would sideline Kerrigan, who (assuming she's on the side of the angels again) would be one of their most powerful fighters, at least in its later phases.

7. Both characters are intelligent enough to realize how tremendously impractical this would be.

Now, I did make comments in my earlier posts on Starcraft 2 that I would like to have a happy ending for both of them and brought up the notion of them retiring to Mar Sara and having red-headed telepathic kids who play with Zerglings like most kids play with puppies.

However, that's for later, as in, after Mengsk is overthrown and the Dark Voice and its army of Protoss-Zerg hybrids is defeated.  Right now, there's a war on.