Wow... That made me want to cry. Poor Jonathan! :(

Man, even if John was played by Keanu f*-ing Reeves, I just felt bad for the guy. I mean, dude gets tortured by the embodiment of evil (or in the movie's case, the embodiment of "wah-wah my girlfriend's dead, poor me"), his wife cheats on him with said embodiment of evil, tracks down the monster so he can save his wife only to see her turn on him. This fic really captures that sympathy I had for him.

No offense to Coppola, but I prefered the original novel's story structure of a band of brothers saving the damsel from damnation over the movie's story of lost love and all that jazz. I don't know what it is but Dracula's being viewed in a more sympathetic light, and that's alright I suppose, but now they're viewing him as a sad sack of wangst over lost love as opposed to the magnificent bastard of literary villainy he was meant to be. I'll take Lugosi over Oldman anyday.

Wow...such a somber tone, such a cutting ending! That was beautiful, and went down a path I had never considered. Very nice.

I like this story, and this outburst of sympathy for Jonathan - there aren't enough stories focusing on his feelings, unfortunately. And it feels very realistic to me, Jonathan wondering about all the portraits and such. I like the vingette quality as well, but would have also enjoyed a longer story on this subject - there really is a lot to work with here, I think.

So, Mina left Jonathan? Wonder where she went and what happens during her time away from her husband? Maybe it's during that time she discovers she's pregnant from her one night with Vlad, and that she'd still have a part of him with her. As always, looking forward to reading the next installments. ; )

Incredible view of Jonathan's secret turmoils.

I always felt a little sorry for Jonathan. He was the second fiddle to Dracula, and I've always wondered how he felt about that. Did he think that Mina was under the vampire's control or did she fall in love with him? That thought had to hide in the recesses of his mind for years.

He was very much a boy in the beginning. Part of him was a wide-eyed boy who looked at life through rose colored glasses, then he found out that there are creatures that hide under the bed and in the closet. He goes out to save the damsel in distress and slay the dragon -- the boy Galahad with Van Helsing as his older mentor and the others as brother knights united to fight evil. I don't know if he ever became a "man" through his trials and tribulations, but he grew past being the boy we saw at the start.

Bram Stoker had Jonathan and Mina together at the end of his book, but I always wanted Vlad to regain his humanity in the end and be with Mina in the movie version. I've often wondered if it was Vlad the man that Mina fell in love with or if it was Dracula the vampire that she fell for. He was two people wrapped into one tormented being. More intriguingly, if faced with the choice, would Mina choose Vlad the man or Jonathan the boy-turning-man?