#I… don’t even know how to tag this

[goblins-riddles-or-frocks]

I wonder why vampires aren't shown to be as depressing as Aleksander is. (Idk anything about this book but since I follow you I have been reading all these metas and DAMNNN)

LMAOOOO first of all formal apology for subjecting all my previous followers who didn’t sign up for TGT meta to all of this TGT meta.

But also, I would argue that some, to even a lot, of vampires are that depressing? The Louis du Point du Lac archetype is a very prevalent one, that then got eventually watered down to the angsty Angels and Edward Cullens of the genre. (I would argue that Aleksander is directly written in conversation with the latter type) And the Vampire Chronicles/Interview With the Vampire itself, with its cast of varyingly wretched, depressed, and traumatized immortals, arguably redefined the vampire genre entirely.

Meanwhile, if you were following my blog before this, I’m assuming you’re here for Hellsing. In that, vampirism is partially a metaphor for trauma, or at least a past that cannot be overcome and turning to self destructiveness for it. Alucard’s entire personal motivation and goal is to die.

In my gradual fandom hop from Hellsing to TGT, I basically just went from analyzing the inner workings of one murderous and miserable, 500+ year old war criminal for anons in my inbox to another— only one of them happens to be Dracula!

(And I have said a couple times before that I think the Darkling is written like a vampire.)

However, I’d agree that there are key differences in the way Aleksander is depressing, and I think that is down to the themes, narrative function, and cultural associations that vampirism frequently lends itself to.

Since you aren’t familiar, I’ll sum up the plot of TGT as briefly as I can. It starts out as a very typical chosen one fantasy, where the protagonist Alina Starkov, an overlooked and unremarkable orphan serving in the military, is discovered to be the lost princess the super special, never before seen magic user with the special type of sunlight magic that the entire country has been waiting for to save it from the shadowy, monster filled dimensional rift, smack dab in the middle of it, that’s been making everyone’s life hell. She’s immediately whisked away to a life of luxury, and taken under wing by The Darkling, the mysteriously goth and pretty commander of all magic users who possesses the antithesis of her power. If she can summon light, he can summon shadows. He’s supposedly “only” one hundred years old, but his ancestor created the Shadow Fold. And he’s soooo sad and guilty about that inherited mistake and he’s determined to fix it. Alina’s supposed to to help him do it— chiefly, through the power of a mythical amplifier that’s meant to enhance her power. But the mid point of the very first book is that shdgdd after a big makeout scene with very dubious vibes, one of Alina’s magic teachers, herself turning our to be the Darkling’s mother, reveals that he’s much older than he claims and that he created the Shadow Fold and has no intention of destroying it, as opposed to using it as a weapon against other countries. And he also means to use the amplifier they’ve been searching for to magically enslave her and take her power for his own. So Alina runs away! And this sets off the rest of the series which is a race to get to each of the three mythical amplifiers before the other does. And generally evading the Darkling who has now gone gloves off and doesn’t mind showing himself to be an unfeeling mass murderer.

The narrative from this point on positions him chiefly as Alina’s foil, as her potential future and worst case scenario. As she amasses her own power and makes sacrifices in the name of defeating him, she’s presented as essentially being in danger of falling into the same path of corruption over centuries. Because, crucially, now that she has the amplifiers, she will also be immortal. And he is both convinced that she must turn out like him, but also that her immortality positions her as his equal above mortals, and as his companion, even if he must capture her and break her will down to make her see that.

The series’ main themes— handled with… debatable success— are that of autonomy, greed, the corruption inherit in accumulated power, and the pitfalls of means to an end morality. The particular ways that Aleksander is a uniquely miserable character are inextricable from his role in the story and what he is meant to represent. But the in-universe circumstances of his immortality also change things a lot.

Vampiric angst is usually tied to the overtly, or otherwise thinly veiled, Christian concept of damnation. Vampirism is culturally a curse, drinking blood to live, and fearing the sunlight is meant to be monstrous. There are individual instances (World of Darkness, some of the True Blood lore) where vampires have their own doctrines and believe themselves to be chosen or better than mortals. But typically cultural associations with them are uniformly negative.

In TGT there is the vague implication of “shadow powers bad” but it’s mostly framed as prejudice against something unknown. Meanwhile magic isn’t inherently awful, and the more powerful a magic user the more long lived they are, hence Aleksander pretending to be 100ish was believable. But hardly anyone else actually lives into multiple centuries the way he has. He’s an aberration. There’s also no element of like readily making anyone else immortal, so Aleksander ends up in this kind of bewilderingly lonely position of being isolated in his power and having no real idea of how or why this happened (beyond his equally long lived mother explicitly trying to have The Most Powerful Child Ever)

I think similarly, immortality as something that’s given to someone at some point during their life, as is the case with vampires, tends to evoke themes of stagnation and being frozen in time. Aleksander is a VERY inadaptable character, who isn’t really able to comprehend how much his sense of morals has been warped over the years. But he’s very driven and forward looking?

I feel like vampires as a concept don’t lend as easily and immediately to the “I am going to create widespread political change” type. And again with no preexisting associations with being cursed or damned, nor their being the inherent need for murder to survive, I think Aleksander ends up being in a position where he’s both more and less morally ambiguous. He’s not inherently monstrous, he only becomes that way through gradual, and inadvertent moral corruption. There’s no element of “succumbing to his nature.” He can keep thinking that he’s fully morally correct as long as he believes his goals are worth it and his sacrifices will have a return on them. The fact that he easily could have turned out completely differently and never been a villain at all is integral to his character.

Vampires conversely tend to deal with corruption of the soul/moral character at the point of immortality, or about consciously trying to combat the corruption of a known and acknowledged baser nature.

I’m aware that I’m making a lot of generalizations and assumptions about the ready thematic functions of vampires in fiction, but I hope this makes sense? Basically I think the tragedy just comes from a different direction.

Anyway, while I’m talking about vampires, I want to circle back to my earlier point about the Darkling feeling Edward Cullen influenced to me. Shadow and Bone was published in 2011, and with how slow moving the traditional publishing industry is, it’s safe to say it was written at least a year or two prior.

This would be towards the tail end of the post Twilight paranormal, and specifically vampire, romance boom. It was not at all uncommon to see unironic romances focusing on impressionable teenaged protagonists with poor self esteem, getting with 100+ year old love interests who, in singling them out (for their “maturity” and discontent from their peer group) validate their self worth, but also completely isolate and impose their own values on them.

The first half of the very first TGT book follows those same tropes pretty closely, and the initial romance heavy book marketing was basically indistinguishable from that crop of books.

To be clear, I think wish fulfillment stories are fine lol, but it’s really interesting to think of SaB (and the Darkling!) as a deliberate deconstruction in response to those trends.

Anyway this kind of went all over the place.

TLDR: I think vampires are?? frequently just as depressing?? They just tend to do it in mildly different ways. Also I have a soap box about Aleksander being a direct take on Edward Cullen (and others of his character type) being easily read as a controlling and abusive groomer.

[vanderwoodlings]

I was thinking about the gap between my ‘dan and serena’ and ‘derena’ tags and the utter lack of one between my ‘blair and dan’ and ‘dair’ tags and, like, I don’t mean this in any way that’s judgy about (or even directed towards) those people, but while I’ve seen people say that dair was a case of adding romance to a perfectly good friendship, I’ve never actually seen anyone shipping it platonically

Which is interesting!

And tbh I think it is part of the appeal for me that derena is so flexible and weird about how romantic it is (extremely unpredictable move there by local aromantic). On the other hand, I do love dair’s interactions before anyone thought about making them a romance, but like. It does just feel right that oh yeah, those idiots are falling in love as soon as you hit the W era. Yeah, they’re gonna do that, okay

[zytes]

this manatee looks like it’s in a skyrim loading screen

[turtleblogatlast]

Leo learns something about himself 🏳️‍⚧️

Based roughly on this old post.

Bonus:

[Leo is taking the fact that he was born biologically female simultaneously very well and also not so well but overall he’s mostly coping with the fact that it was Draxum that just essentially gave him the turtle equivalent of ‘The Talk’.]

[zooberriie]

My confession of the day is I actually believed Wicked was about Gelphie enemies to lovers for a hot minute

[white-weasel]

Funniest bit of the dnd movie is Xenk clearly being an NPC the DM introduced for lore and plot purposes who’s a competent fighter because of course he is, his reputation and backstory require it. But whoopsies the DM made him too powerful, the whole party likes him, and now they want him to come with to fight the BBEG which will completely and utterly fuck up the encounter balance

So instead of there being any actual plot reason he can’t join Xenk just says “I can’t. This is something only you can do.” And then walks off, never to interact with the party again because the DM just knows those little shits will find a way to use their OP creation against them

[apollos-boyfriend]

i may be a toxic gatekeeper but unless they were there all these sad quote/imagine accounts will NEVER understand the intricacies of “what am i without you?” / “yourself?” because they NEVER put a question mark on tubbo’s response. yeah the quote hits hard on its own whatever but the context is SO necessary and adds SO much. tubbo’s response isn’t really. as driven as “yourself.” with that period (.) would be. and, again, adding the period spins the meaning and narrative into something completely different (in a bad way!!! to me!!!! boooo booo tomato tomato etc!!!!)

because tubbo responds in a way that makes it seem like tommy asked him if the sky is blue. like, yeah, obviously yourself, what do you mean, boss man? because tubbo doesn’t value himself in the same way tommy values him. and tommy doesn’t value himself in the same way tubbo values him. there’s a clash of ideals on both sides. that’s what makes it so interesting!!!

but by removing the question mark you create this call and response of “i can’t imagine myself without you / your personhood is important and i am here to remind you to value yourself” instead of the much stronger call and response of “i can’t imagine myself without you / i can’t imagine myself mattering (that much) to you” and it drives me insane

[ducktracy]

there are a lot of evil people in the world and a lot of darkness in the world and so it’s very important for me to stress that now more than ever is the time to spread kindness and compassion. combat the evil by not only not partaking in it, but actively refuting it. destroy the notion that being compassionate or generous or kind to someone is uncool or embarrassing or even scary. be the change you want to see. start a chain reaction. positivity only breeds more positivity. do an act of kindness for someone so that that person who is too afraid to do it themselves can see you, realize that they’re not alone, and perhaps sheepishly follow your example. and then the next person who is too afraid but sees that person can do the same. when bad news comes out about bad people or horrible atrocities in the world it’s such an easy impulse to despair, and obviously it’s important to feel what you need to feel. grieve. be angry. be sorrowful. be empathetic. but dust off your pants and get up and be a part of a chain reaction that, no matter how small the scale, and spread compassion and love and care. all the reasons why you might not—“it’s hard! it’s scary! people will make fun of me! it’s useless because there’s too much evil!” are all grade A arguments as to why you should. you have no idea how many people you could inspire to do the same. even if it doesn’t get you anyway far, you can at least say you have the nobility of trying. please choose love and please choose life. you are worth loving and you are worth inspiring others to love

[crocsandbitches]

Not to get overly sentimental but rap beef is honestly such a creative form of expression. Like we’re going to hold off on kicking the shit out of each other and calling up shooters to make clever rhymes about each other and get the common man saying words like ‘double entendre.’

Here’s a couple of suggestions of other diss tracks to listen to if you’ve found you’ve liked bitchy poetry:

Ether - Nas (2001) - diss track vs Jay Z & widely considered to be one of the best diss tracks ever released. It’s a response to Jay Z’s diss ‘Takeover’ which at the time of its release left people thinking Nas’ career was over and then Nas uno reversed that shit with Ether and it’s still considered to be a miracle that Jay Z managed to maintain his fame.

Hit ‘em up - 2Pac (1996) -diss track vs Biggie & Bad Boy records. Part of the East Coast / West Coast beef. 2Pac was shot 5 times and survived and Biggie released a song called ‘Who Shot Ya.’ Hit em up is Pac’s response and it’s iconic. Plus the tune is groovy as shit.

Real Muthaphuckkin’ G’s - Eazy E (1993) - Dr Dre left his group NWA over a dispute about contracts/pay. He later released a song called ‘Fuck with Dre Day’ where he had a go at Eazy E (the lead rapper of NWA). Eazy released this in response and it’s another groovy, west coast banger.

Story of Adidon- Pusha T (2018) - Pusha T walked so Kendrick Lamar could run. Need I say more.

No Vaseline - Ice Cube (1991) - vs remaining members of NWA. Cube was the first to leave NWA over contracts/pay disputes. The remaining members released an album, with subtle disses against him. Ice Cube, as Ice Cube does, got pissed.

Life’s on the Line - 50 Cent (2003) - adding this because 50 Cent hates as easily as he breathes and it’s something to marvel at. His beef with Ja Rule started in ‘99 when Ja Rule was robbed by 50’s people and then one thing lead to another and 50 was stabbed and then he was shot 9 times. ‘Time is the best medicine-‘ no. no it’s not. If anything 50 gets angrier through the years. 19 years later 50 bought 200 tickets to Ja Rule’s concert so the front rows were completely empty.

[deep-space-lines]

an experiment called “is this gonna make me gain or lose followers”

[lygma-nygma]

Being a batfam fan is funny because people will make a post like “here’s my headcanon-“ and it’s just something that’s directly canon to the story then post about major canon events and get everything wrong.

[kurthummeldeservesbetter]

I feel like something that should have been explored more in Arcane is that despite the dangers and pretty much horrific conditions, Zaun children seemingly grow up a lot more caring and have a larger understanding of family in comparison to Piltover children. And if such a reflection of the real world in a sense.

The kids of Zaun seemingly grow up with a lot more adult support. Ekko is easily welcomed under Benzo’s wings. Vander adopts 4 kids (two of which we learn he knew of before their parents death, two of which we can’t be sure of). Silco, despite all what happened, and his ulterior motives, shows no problem adopting Powder/Jinx. In the alternate universe it seems as though he’s still played a part in the kids lives. Jinx adopts Isha easily and Sevika cares for her as well. Hell, even Mr. War Crimes Against Humanity does well with little Viktor (until ya know, the animal abuse).

Hell, up until Vander dies (the first time) there seems to be a large understanding of if there’s an orphan or a kid in need of guidance, take them in! (And certainly don’t inform them of your plans to turn a giant pink salamander into drugs and be confused when a nine year old doesn’t understand). If a kid wants to be your apprentice, let them! For the most part, until things all went wrong in the end of act 1 of season 1, the worst parts of Zaun seem pretty typical for any city in poverty.

Match that with what we see with how Caitlyn and Jayce grow up. Caitlyn is given adult support, yes, and it’s clearly a good adult mentor, but it’s not entirely by her choice. It’s been chosen for her. She’s safe, but there’s a lack of freedom of choice. Meanwhile, when Jayce gets older, and that same accident in Act 1 happens, the family that supported him and his mom turns their backs. His own mom doesn’t support him either, because she’s afraid of what he’s talking about, but also because he’s damming them to being outcasts.

Conversely, Vander is more than willing to take the fall for what Claggor, Milo, Vi and Powder did. He’s willing to go to prison for a long time, in order for them to have a better future. Despite Vi’s best efforts, he’s not going to listen to her (she is just a kid) and he’s not letting his family go down and get hurt.

Meanwhile, a man who grew up in this mentality, where there’s a wide sense of family support from people who aren’t your biological family, is the one to go to Jayce, a stranger, and tells him he believes in him. It’s why it’s such a shock to Jayce; his own family and family friends denied him. They didn’t support him.

I think that’s what makes all the difference. Piltover and Zaun have wildly different understandings of family and forgiveness. For Piltover, it shuns and damns the lives of those who upset the balance. For Zaun, it provides safety and never ending understanding.

Just. I’m thinking.

[stealingyourbones]

Never will I stop with the steadfast notion that folks in the DPXDC fandom should interact with at least some form of canon DC media.

There are comics, tv shows, radio dramas both old and new, podcasts, movies, magazines, so much shit that intentionally avoiding the media is simply preventing yourself from spawning new ideas and gaining a new appreciation for a fandom that you’re already in.

The Superman Radio Show has episodes 11 minutes long. A lot of the TV shows don’t have episodes that surpass 30 minutes and most are nearly fully clipped on the official DC YouTube channel. The amount of fan made motion comics is astounding. The amount of fanmade animations is equally as incredible.

[saltedbiscuiit]

Silly 15!skk comic that I sketched awhile ago and dont remember what compelled me to draw this

[stark-lord]

Constantly plagued with thoughts of Edwin now knowing he enjoys being courted and Charles (compulsive charmer) with a whole new arsenal up his sleeve (laser focus on Monty’s whole deal)

“I mean, my smile is prett-y convincing” yeah yeah okay I can see where this is heading. Outlook not so good (for me)

[ciderjacks]

infantilization