Old Age Dracula

Dracula is essentially an old vampire that attacked people for blood. I haven’t encountered Dracula in the reading form at all before this course. I have seen a really old movie of Dracula however where he turns into a bat and takes in pretty women in order to taste their blood. Who doesn’t know about Dracula though? He’s in very modern forms of media and if people don’t know exactly who he is they know similar kinds of  vampires like Dracula such as vampire diaries, count chocula, and true blood. The media today has sexualized vampires and their no longer scary creatures of the night, but beings that walk among us whom we could fall in love with.

                                                   

The story starts off with Jonathon Harker. He overly criticizes every piece of information that he come in contact with from the spices that people use in food to the way that Dracula appears physically. Every sign is telling Jonathon Harker to turn the opposite way and run, but instead he waits until the last possible second. Even the townspeople are scared for him and tell him not to leave. Jonathons encounter with Dracula seems like a set up since his friend knew Dracula and purposefully sent him to Dracula.

I was expecting a lot more violence and blood sucking. The closest thing that I got to something horrible happening  as a reader was Dracula scaling down a wall and threatening Johnathon. What perplexes me is why Dracula would allow Jonathon to leave. It was easy prey.

I find the journal entries were interesting. The detail in which he describes people made him seem idiodic. In situations where I’m not sure what’s going on and I feel uneasy, I find it best to follow my gut instinct. However, I feel that Johnathon ignoring signs makes the reader more engaged because I just want to shake him and tell him wtf and point him in the right direction. But, we are reading a book of horror so I guess there has to be a little bit of ignorance. 

The Diaries of Lizzie

I've never understood really how hard core people go for the things they love.  For pride and prejudice, fans seemed to have gone to whatever lengths they can to support their favorite book. I'm not a big pride and prejudice fan, but I would assume that fans of the novel didn't exactly favor these videos.

In the Lizzie Bennett diaries I felt that it was more of a parody. To me it made the characters seem more outlandish than in the book. I think some characteristics of specific people were emphasized then more in the book.

In the video blog Lizzie's sister Lydia seemed to be very annoying and came off as a hoe. I thought that it was rude how Lizzie took as many chances as she could to point out her infidelity. Whenever the topic of Lizzie's mom is brought up, something is always said about her being crazy. Mrs. Bennet is always seen as the mom who goes to extreme lengths to hook her daughters up with eligible bachelors. In the book, to me it come off as more of a caring aspect instead of crazy antics.

One thing I wasn't prepared for with the Vlog was how bearable Mr. Bingley looked. He looked better than expected because I thought he would have been older. I didn't think that viewers would actually get to see characters other than Jane, Lizzie and Lydia.. Jane was of course portrayed as the nicest person in the world which does align with the book. However, the one person she couldn't say anything nice about was Mr. Darcy.

Overall, this web-series was annoying. The whole series seems like a joke because it didn't seem like any of the characters were played seriously. For me, the problem was how Lizzie Bennet delivered the message. Instead of acting out a story with just her and her sisters they should have found a way to actually incorporate the characters they were talking about. Also, Charlotte is supposed to be in charge of their vlog, but she practically disappears.

The New World Sherlock

From looking at the assignment, I didn’t think that I was going to like the show. I thought it was going to be just like the book, boring. Overall, I felt that Elementary was very enjoyable and kept the watcher engaged. I think that the show accurately captured the essence of who Sherlock Holmes was with a few added things that were not needed. I think that reading the Sherlock Holmes stories weren’t as interesting, but watching the show made everything come for circle, at least for me. I don’t see myself personally reading the Holmes stories, but the show is so intriguing that I would watch it on my own time. Watching is a lot easier to understand Sherlock then reading.

The actor playing Sherlock portrayed him so well that I think they hit all of the major points needed except one. Holmes was a drug addict who used well reasoning and deduction to solve crimes, and who can throw away things that he’s learned in a moment’s notice however, I felt that the Snarky comments that were in the stories from Holmes were none existent in the show. His addict past made him seem more human instead of a superhero crime fighting invincible badass. His addiction made him more relatable.

No adaptation of a story is supposed to be exactly the same, so I liked that Holmes’ sidekick best friend was a girl. This was made for modern day viewers so, you can’t expect everything to stay the same. However, Holmes only had a sidekick because she was forced to be around. Because the show wasn’t from her point of view on Holmes it made the story better.

Holmes is supposed to be on his own and be self-reliant, but instead it as though he is on the police force working side by side as a police detective. To me, he might as well be a police officer. What didn’t make sense to me was, why would the police force enlist a drug addict to work with them? Do the not do background checks? Holmes was way to easily accepted. In society, I think that drug addicts are the outcasts or pariahs. But one thing that doesn’t make sense about all the Holmes stories period is that drugs destroy brain chemicals that you can never get back. So why would a drug addict be so good at solving crimes?