Blog Post #7

Annotated Bibliography

Fernandez-Vara, Clara. Dracula Defanged: Empowering the Player in Castlevania: Symphony of the Night, Simon Fraser University, 1 Jan. 1970, dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/100408.

Clara Fernadez argues that vampires have become a lot more appealing and desirable as their connotation changed from the original menacing blood-sucking beast to a beautiful and seductive superhuman due to the various forms of media that adapt over one another. Fernandez exemplifies this argument by primarily focusing on the video game Castlevania: Symphony of the Night in which the “glamourous” player character, Alucard, battles the old “stock” villainous Count Dracula who adopts classic boss abilities: teleportation, fireballs, boss stages, etc. This game depicts the clash between the first kind of vampire made in the 19th century and the new beautiful vampire of modern times, which adds to the author’s argument that multiple kinds of vampires exist and the idea of the vampire has fluctuated throughout the media. Fernadez highlights the first adaptations of novels such as Bram Stoker’s Dracula and Polidori’s The Vampyre into movies and other visual media like Murnau’s Nosferatu (2–11). Fernandez’s argument demonstrates how ideas and concepts can evolve and develop, taking a different form but the original idea is never forgotten and becomes a sort of stereotype. Expanding on the context of vampires in video games from the article, I can pivot my research specifically toward the way vampires have been portrayed in video games, thus further extending on the changing connotation Fernandez argues about in her journal. In doing so, I’d be providing the addition of critical reviews over characters in video games and their origins, possibly tying in Bram Stoker’s Dracula for the fact there are video games directly related to the novel. Not only that, but I can also discuss how these games can relate and build off of each other by following a timeline similar to that of vampiric literature.