#Like maybe the “parents are dead” part is an accident (there are mixed interpretations there) but the rest of the stuff sure as hell wasn't

[fordtato]

I saw a post about how Bill "isn't ACTUALLY the villain" of Gravity Falls, given his ✨tragic backstory✨. Y'all know you can be sad and evil at the same time, right? You know Bill maybe feeling kinda bad for his actions does not make him the VICTIM of his own actions, right?

He gleefully drew little doodles of 12-year-olds in puddles of blood and you people are like "but his parents are dead." YEAH. HE KILLED THEM.

[xtrablak674]

Singing my life with his words...

I am not sure what I expected, but I didn't expect that.

Trailers, I think they serve a purpose, in my personal opinion they can skew expectations, generate false anticipation and quite frankly spoil the story. I stopped watching them a few years ago. I mostly pick my films based on familiarity, or subject material and sometimes, well a lot of times seeing stills or gif sets of the film on Tumblr.

Hey I am a visual artist, pulling out stills of a film that feature its visual aesthetics is like crack to me, I just can't get enough! Recently I added more queer films to my diet, and albeit tonights Friday Night Movie's theme wasn't solely left to the gays, All of Us Strangers had been stalking me for weeks all over the Tumblr-verse, so I gave in and added it to the list along with The Marvels and The Color Purple, two other '23 films that kept @'ing me.

Part of my process in choosing my films is traditionally picking a theme or genre and trying to watch films from different decades just to mix it up a bit. These films were all from last year, so they only other thing I could use to distinguish them was their release dates, this placed All of Us, in the middle, right after Marvel's latest block-bluster. #YesThatWasShade

Having peeped that this was categorized as romance and fantasy, I was curious what made it fantasy. Once again IMDB had mis-labeled a film, this wasn't fantastical but a psychological thriller! #LeSigh Maybe I was way too close to the subject material and Andrew Scott clearly being my contemporary wasn't helping the matter at all.

Some of the details were different, albeit after my moms death I was raised as a single-child. I came from a one-parent home, not two. We didn't live in a house but an apartment. We were clearly not middle-class but living below the poverty level. Even with all of these differences I felt exposed in a way that wasn't remotely comfortable. How had this whyte man found out about my story and was now telling it on a stage for all the world to see? #😳

Metastatic breast cancer was the cause of death listed on her death certificate, not a car accident. I wasn't left alone in her bed while she left me for a Christmas party, but I discovered her dead in her bed, the couch in the living room four days before my eleventh birthday. Nine years later I buried my father, who was found by his parents rotting in his Harlem apartment, a reverse to the film where the dad went first followed by the mom.

Like the film they were joined in a way by both dying at approximately forty-four years of age. I rued the moment I would be the same age because like my parents, I thought I'd never live past it, but just like Adam I ultimately ended up being older than my parents than when they died. If I met them now, I guess I would be the one dispensing words of wisdom.

Unlike Adam I wasn't lonely, I have lived alone for nearly thirty years, and have had moments of loneliness, but like so many things that a multiple-orphan and an individual with intersectional identities, I had developed coping methods that were born when I was separated from my siblings at eleven and for the first time had to suffer the world on my own, navigate bullying and nasty taunts from other children. I had learned to have a rich internal emotional life, being my own best friend, and creating adventures in the simplest of things. I had become my own best company.

But like Adam I longed for connection, I longed for resolution around my dead parents. But unlike Adam I am not dead. That's my big reveal/spoiler these many paragraphs in to this essay/journal entry. I think everyone we encountered in that film was dead. #HolySixSenseBatman Delving into how I understood this is immaterial to how it still felt. His parents wanted him to move-on, which could be misconstrued as moving on with his life, but could also have been acknowledging that he was indeed dead and accepting it. The nuance of interpretations of what exactly is going on in the film is masterful, and the director never quite gives us a definitive answer.

Adam felt he wasn't particularly successful with anything in his life, still feeling the scars of his childhood bullying, taunting and the trauma of losing his parents at such a young age. I have mirrored this feeling about my own life, with the only difference that I have been more successful than my parents because I made it to the upper-middle class. #yea But like Adam I have always felt I am just passing-the-time, existing and muddling through.

Curiously the last real relationship I had was nearly twenty years ago, and also interesting was the fact that like Adam, Karl was my junior and like Harry was damaged in many ways, clearly not visible to the world around him, because even my best friend at the time thought he was the boy next door, literally mirroring the movie by his perceptions.

Isn't this why we watch films? Don't we see ourselves in the characters on the screens and sometimes wish we were them or living the lives they were living? Or sometimes what we see on screen is too close to reality and art imitates life in a ghastly manor. But then that means the director/writer has done his job right? Making you feel the pains, indecisions and joy of fictional characters is what a good film is about. But is it exciting to see yourself realized in a way that you wish wasn't you?

All of Us Strangers is a psychological thriller, clearly with aspects of drama and romance. As the reviews say it is haunting and heartbreaking. It is also something else that I am tired of in queer cinema, albeit as realistic as it is, specifically to my own journey, it once again paints queer-life as sad, aloof and unfulfilled.

Having dealt with dysthymia my entire adult life I guess this is in some ways true, but as I explored in a previous entry, I really want our queer movies to be more aspirational. I am not saying Red White & Royal Blue syrupy, but some middle place where we can be not-partnered, not have kids and not be dying or dead and be content with our lives. Is this asking too much?

[Photo Courtesy of All of Us Strangers via IMDB]

[every-aj-needs-an-angel]

So last week was a particularly tough one for me, one of the rubbish things about getting older is that everyone I used to rely on now has their own lives. I’m no longer the practice baby because they all have their own so when life hits like a ton of bricks, I’m usually just left to crawl through it alone but this time I had help here. I could log in and there’d be a beautiful piece of artwork, a mind blowing gif, some incredible writing or a fun ask game going on and long story short it all just helped so much that I wanted to give something back, even if it pales in comparison its the thought that counts right? Anyway this little sort of AU idea has been floating around my head for a while so I decided to try to write it out as an ode to all the lovely blogs, just for being their wonderful selves. @yusufnicolo @ssungods @marwankenzari @nicolodigenovas @noenoaholi @aliceblakeart @ahkaraii @fereldenturnip @hachinana87 @luminarai @mannadraws @tiups @monicashipsnickyjoe @nico-di-genova @nilefreemans @quyhns @fantasticbeastsandheretofindthem @leanconnoli @pirateladyoftherbbc @spearmintthief @starsisbig @stuart-littles-gay-attorney Thank you so much and sorry in advance.

I’ve Been Dreaming Of You My Whole Life.

A Joe/Nicky tale.

When Yusuf was finally born there was no wailing, no snuffling, no hiccuping sobs, just silence. His mother wasn’t surprised, it had been a long and arduous labour and she was too numb to be sad or disappointed yet. No one tried to save little Yusuf, he was born in a different time, no one yet knew how or that it was even possible. Although a short time later when baby Yusuf not only started to breathe, but scream as healthily as any other baby, all on his own, they were all delighted by their miracle. No one questioned it, just grateful for their beautiful bundle of joy, especially when their first born turned out to be their only child.

Little Nicolò was a surprise, born as the third child to parents thought too old to have another, his elder siblings taking care of him when he would become too fussy and restless. Ten year old, Lucia would take her baby brother on long walks to entertain him, fashioning a sling to carry him on her back when his little legs grew tired of walking. Thirteen year old, Ermo on his way back from town, caught up to his younger siblings on the road leading back to their home. Nico was tiring of being carried, kicking and whining, but the sun was starting to set and not wanting to stop so close to home, Ermo agreed to hold Nicolò steady while he was released from his sling. Disaster struck, however, when the teen was distracted by their neighbours daughter waving enthusiastically and shouting his name, Ermo turned his back on his siblings to return her attentions and Nicolò fell from the sling hitting the ground with a dull thud. An impassioned argument started between the two siblings until they realised with horror that for the first time in his life Nicolò was completely silent and frighteningly still. Ermo sprinted home to fetch their parents but by the time the family arrived back to where the accident had happened, Nicolò was up and wandering around, babbling to his sobbing sister. Their father checked Nicolò over and they went home, not thinking too much of it, just happy that the littlest member was unharmed but the two older siblings learned to be much more careful with their baby brother.

Yusuf had always dreamed of three people, always the same three people, until one day he started to dream of a little boy as well. Unfortunately for Yusuf he didn’t have any real friends, other children were always mean to him even though he was always kind, he didn’t understand why but he didn’t mind much. Instead he kept the people from his dreams close to him, taking them into his heart, they became his friends, hoping one day the weapon wielding ladies and their battle ready companion would come and rescue him from his ordinary and lonely life. The dreams of the boy with the sky coloured eyes and the wild mop of hair started just as life became simultaneously better and worse for Yusuf, better for his new friend, worse in the way he was treated, although the other children’s scorn at a growing boy having imaginary friends did have one advantage in that, in his attempt to explain how he saw the world, Yusuf became a highly adept artist.

The dreams were interpreted differently by Nicolò, when he saw a tiny baby or a little boy with a head full of tiny ringlets, kind eyes and a dazzling smile mixed with images of three adults, always together, smiling even in battle; Nicolò thought them a calling. Visions of a numinous little boy mistaken for the Messiah and, depending on how old Nicolò was, either disciples or those known as the Three Wise Men. His family encouraged this hypothesis when he told them of the dreams, especially after a few years of the same recurring characters, even if the dreams themselves sometimes differed, no one questioned the theory that there were bigger plans for their Nico. The dreams fuelled his belief, strengthening it all throughout his life, thinking he’d been chosen for a purpose, especially as his morals wavered over a choice between leaving the priesthood or joining Ermo in going to battle. Nicolò wasn’t sure he was as brave as the three friends he saw every night but by his late teens he was sure his visions were guiding him in the right direction so he set off with his big brother.

Once word of invaders reached Yusuf’s people he suddenly became less enamoured with the idea of people who fought so easily. Images of the blue eyed boy, slowly becoming a man, were always fewer than those of the three unlikely best friends but he now woke in a cold sweat whenever he saw them. Their laughter once joyful, now seemed taunting rather than comforting. Yusuf began to wonder whether he’d known of the invasion all his life and had never heeded the warning. He offered to take night watch, learning how to fight in the day, readying himself to defend his home until bone deep exhaustion took over and he didn’t dream, just slept. He repeated this behaviour until the battle came, although he almost missed it, running into the fray in time to see sky blue eyes, that he knew better than he knew his own, staring back in disbelief.

Nicolò’s shock was quickly taken over by anger, deep rooted fear that maybe what he’d been seeing for as long as he could remember wasn’t what he thought after all, that he’d blindly walked into this life. The trust he’d put into his assumed visions shattering as he stared back into the face of the young man he should hate but knew all too well, leaving deep betrayal and visions of the horrors he’d seen since he started his journey bubbling in his mind's eye, fuelling his rage like a lightning storm, death, destruction and his big brother’s broken body and lifeless eyes causing a red mist. Nicolò was unseeing with it, could barely breathe and trembling with the need to do something.

Yusuf couldn’t quite believe his eyes, rubbing at them trying to clear what he presumed was a sleep deprived haze, those distinctive features, the azure eyes staring back, it just seemed impossible, especially when they mirrored such recognition. Surely such a kind and brilliant person couldn’t be a part of this, couldn’t be a part of the death and destruction of the reputation that preceded the invaders, eyes so beautifully blue that crinkled just so when he smiled, couldn’t hate so deeply that he would join such an unjust cause. It had to be a hallucination or maybe he was still asleep and dreaming. It wouldn’t be the first time he’d dreamed of battles, only those dreams were usually filled with laughter whereas now all he could hear was the clangs of metal and the rage of men.

Nicolò charged forward not really sure what he was doing, what he really wanted to do was run away, far away, all the way back home. He didn’t know why he was running into the mess that surrounded him, he certainly didn’t realise he was holding his sword until it was sticking in the boy he’d been dreaming of for as long as he could remember, who seemed equally shocked to have instinctively reached for his own weapon slicing blindly but precisely. The choking and lack of breath wasn’t as scary as Nico had assumed it would be. The rage he’d felt not moments ago draining from him in an instant was replaced by a deep disappointment that he’d never get to find out what the dreams meant or who the boy now in front of him was. It was a little late to ask even if they had the capacity to do so and as he sunk to the ground watching the light fade from the familiar brown eyes and from around his vision he wondered if they’d meet again, wherever it was they were going now.

Waking alone in a field full of bodies but the one you died with felt bizarre to Yusuf, he still wasn’t sure he wasn’t dreaming but he was quite sure his imagination wasn’t good enough to conjure the sights and smells that surrounded him, his only comfort being that there seemed to be more dead invaders than those of his people. He realised that he now had a choice, he could go home and wait for the next battle or he could leave in the hopes of catching up to the blue eyed boy, in the hopes of getting some answers. Maybe he knew that they dreamed of each other, maybe he dreamed of the three friends too and maybe he knew why they dreamed of each other. Although right now a more pressing question seemed to be why did you just stab me? but somehow Yusuf instinctively knew that he’d not really meant it, or maybe that was wishful thinking. As he checked himself for the wound he realised it was missing, he wondered again if he was just dreaming but decided either way he was going after his friend. Yusuf chuckled to himself as he realised that he still classed his murderer as his friend, maybe there was something wrong with him like the others had always said after all.

It was three days after the battle and Nicolò had never felt so alone, his brother and his battalion dead, the person he dreamed of was too. He wondered if this was his punishment for questioning his purpose, being left to roam the world alone, maybe he’d get home and find his mother and sister gone too. Nicolò just wanted to sleep but he couldn’t, images taking over his mind, the resonating metal, the taste of blood, tiny matted ringlets on a lifeless body that usually exuded vivacity, he was almost certain he’d only stopped being ill because his body had nothing left to give. At this point he really didn’t care, he would either finally get some rest or his body would give up altogether but the footsteps coming towards him had him instinctively on his feet, weapon in hand and he was reminded that he came from a long line of warriors, it’d take more than a little brooding to change who he was, who he came from, they were all a part of him whether he liked it or not.

Yusuf shuffled to a stop, three days he’d walked and now here he was with a blade sticking out of his chest, he supposed by now he shouldn’t be surprised but surprise was one of the emotions reflected back at him in the sleep deprived, manic blue eyes of the one person he was determined to find, though Yusuf’s slowly staling brain wondered if this one was real, maybe the other three were too. Consciousness flickered as he fell to his knees, concern, confusion and, going by the little crinkle in his dark eyebrows, annoyance pouring out of the blue, washing over Yusuf along with the warmth of the campfire that had led him in the right direction, the yellow light causing some of the flecks to appear green adding an ethereal aura to the one person he simultaneously knew and didn’t, who he fervently he hoped he’d wake again to see.

Present Day

“I thought you said you’d killed each other many times” Nile asked

“Oh, we did! Not always on purpose, of course,” Joe laughed

“We didn’t speak the same language, communication was difficult to start with,” Nicky elaborated, turning back to the stove.

“It sounds like there’s a story behind that!” Nile exclaimed, excitedly banging her hands on the kitchen table.

“Oh there is,” Andy sniggered, taking a sip of her coffee.

“Please, no,” Nicky whined, refusing to look at the group.

“Tell Nile what the first thing you learned to say was,” Andy tittered, Nile turning her full attention to Nicky’s back. Joe reached out to hold Nicky’s hand, rubbing his thumb back and forth as Nicky mumbles inaudibly.

“What was that?” Nile asked giddily.

“I’ve been dreaming of you my whole life,” Joe and Nicky repeat in unison, Nicky turned to look at Joe, a soft smile crinkling his eyes.

Neither man notices Nile’s revering gaze or Andy silently gaining her attention and them both sneaking out the kitchen leaving the lovers to their reminiscing.

[plantfeed]

        ok turns out i am 100% that dumbass bitch who still aint posted my intro on main....... so for reference.....  hello! im nora ( she / her ). im a 24 year old creative writing graduate currently residing in sheffield, south yorkshire. when i’m not hunched over a keyboard writing, i enjoy independent cinema, chinese food, and big nights out that i’ll remember only in fleeting snapshots. i currently work as a barmaid and a tutor for a filmmaking project.  

without further ado, here is my interpretation on the skeleton ‘ophelia’, a development of a character who’s been brewing at the back of my mind for absolutely AGES now so thank u for giving me the push to actually flesh her out. 

ive included a full biography, but please feel free 2 skip to bullet points if TLDR because it is LOOONG..... and im so happy 2 be here.... new home.... chefs kiss.... yes lov u all

IN CHARACTER.

skeleton: ophelia name: theresa rigby. (goes by diminutives tess, tessa, tea or thea. the only time she’s theresa is when she’s in trouble.) age: 21, born july 10 (cancer) faceclaim: diana silvers. gender: cis-female. pronouns: she/her degree: comparative literature & ancient history (joint honours)

INTRO.

trigger warnings.

loss of a parent. missing person / disappearance. drugs and alcohol reliance. death.

BIOGRAPHY.

i. narragansett, rhode island.

              1999, an Austrian sunrise, it is the year of the Water Monkey.  A water baby, first screams under the surface, the catch of it gargled in your throat. A birth mark the size and shape of a door handle pressed into your pelvis like a lover’s badge. Born like a clenched fist. Annie always wished you’d be more like an open palm. You still carry that tension with you, an unreadable kind of silence when you slink around the edge of a room or perch on an arm rest like a bird about to startle and fly off. Nobody knows a thing about you and you like it that way. Conceived in the winter, some of that coldness still lingers in you. 

              The only perfect girl is a dead girl. That’s what you learned, last-born runt of the litter growing up in the bedroom of a girl who would be forever cold, young and pretty. In the beginning, they thought you were a blessing — Bet’s soul reincarnate, the same pale face they’d seen as they’d signed her into the pick ‘n’ mix family. You were given her clothes, her room, even her middle name, stripped and rebranded like a toy doll bought after the last one’s head was chewed off by the dog. Four boys, a dead sister, and you who — with your birdlike features and unrelenting eyes — was merely a walking ghost. Tennis skirts, nail varnish, a shag rug, a rotten corsage; these were the staple reminders that you were living in a shrine, the room never quite your own lest you disturb the lingering presence of Bet. Soon, you began to see it as not a room but rather a prison cell caging you in the imprint of a sister you never met.

              Your mothers met at an undergraduate socialist meeting when the fall semester fell into winter, Kath in a mustard coloured beret, Annie in a blood-orange duffle coat, a philosophy major and an art historian respectively. Your childhood was a montage of potato printing eels onto the walls of a Rhode Island boarding house next to the sea. Five children — some adopted, some surrogate — a permanent rotation of rooms and always a handful of lodgers to foot the bill. Travelling salesmen, students on gap years and tinkers in search of odd-jobs became a flipbook of faces etched into your memories like fleeting figures in the wings of a theatre; you sketch them into the body of your work. They become the characters to haunt the pages of your notebooks, stashed beneath floorboards lest they fall into too-hungry flour-caked fingers, scones baking in the oven two floors below. A house that seemed to physically inhale every time a new body entered it, tall and thin, too small to house all that weight. The gaps beneath the floorboards are the only spaces that feel like your own, untouched by a girl who’s shadow you were born in. In your diary, you scribble her name until it tears through the pages thinking that if you wish hard enough, you’ll make yourself her. It’s never enough.

              At twelve, you lose Annie to a boating accident. You lose a piece of yourself with her and stop wearing yellow. Grief makes a better writer out of you though it sounds selfish to admit it. Kath remarries the following spring, a man named Peter. He is ordinary in all the ways Annie was magical and when he sits in your mother’s chair you feel yourself slip out of your skin and into the body of a raven cawing in the woods, scratching at the dustmites. You try to teach yourself how to be a girl, though you’ve always felt more like a wild thing crouched in the attic window of the lighthouse, screaming at the crash of the waves. You wanted to love the sea as closely as it owned you. In the sea you were rewritten into a tide, into a shell, into the swell of a rockpool around the body of a crab. You wanted to be like the ocean —a tangible, changeling thing —making paper boats and setting them out to sea, wishing you could shrink yourself into one, sail away. For a while, you toy with the idea of starving yourself into something the size and shape of an eel; of growing gills in the night and darting into the ebbing current. They’d think you crazy if you told them.

ii. concord, massachusetts. 

              You butt heads with Kath on a daily basis. She tells you you resent her for moving on with her life when you seem unable to move on with yours. That maybe a clean break would be best for all the family. A fresh start. A change of scene. You lock yourself in the bathroom and cry for an hour until your mouth feels raw, like running a cheesegrater down the inside of your throat. The following September, they send you to boarding school, two suitcases and an armful of Annie’s jumpers. Kath has decided they don’t compliment her skin tone, and she’s not twenty-five or studying philosophy any more. New England becomes the best decision for you that your family have ever made. You thrive on the independence of living in a dormitory on a corridor of Alison’s and Margaret’s and Ruth’s. From the names on their doors, you paint them into people in your head, red-haired Ruth who collects birth stones and can count to twenty in Mandarin. They turn out to be nothing like the versions of them you’ve spun. You love them anyway, their rough-softness, the scuffed knee thrill of growing up half-wild. There’s a brightness in their girlhood that you try to capture in your words. 

              Though you never quite find yourself settling into a group, Dr. Franklin becomes the anchor to which you tether yourself to, a little girl leeching onto her Literature professor for a sense of stability in a tempestuous world. The others might think it sad, but she sees something in you — an inner restlessness, a need to analyse and observe and contain everything within poetry and prose — that reminds her of herself at your age. You begin one-to-one sessions after the school day has closed, whisper about Proust and O’Hara over frothed lattes in a campus-run coffee shop, ink blots on the pages of dog-eared copies she’s gifted to you on an indefinite loan. Sometimes, you think you love her. You run your fingers over the buttons of her typewriter, close your eyes, and imagine yourself pulling on her skin like a new coat.

              The woods become your saviour. In Narragansett you never knew woods, only harboursides, seafood restaurants, the smell of the ocean breeze and a lighthouse calling you home. You learn to love the smell of the earth after rain. The feeling of soil between your toes. The sense of belonging you feel trailing through the woods in stark white nightgown, twigs catching on the mud-stained hem. Massachusetts becomes a place of revision. You remake yourself as a fawn, elegance in your limbs and hunger in your heart. You learn how to write yourself into being. There’s a violence in your grace — simultaneously glass and the hammer that shatters it — and despite the ethereal way you move it’s the leonine stature of a tigress, claws bared, teeth sharpened into fangs, but a smile like butter wouldn’t melt. Lady Macbeth was always your favourite of Shakespeare’s heroines. There’s something dark in her that resonates with you, the way when a pimple appears you have to squeeze it until it bleeds. You tell yourself that everybody has a morbid fascination. 

              Each night you take a torch, a book and a bottle of Merlot, and you wile away the hours reading in the woods. At home, sleep never came easy to you. You’d pace the floorboards counting sheep and wake having barely slept a blink. This, on the other hand, seems useful, though when you’re never asleep, you’re never quite awake, floating through the school day like a ghost, part removed, the dark circles pulling your eyes to a close. It’s a tiredness you carry in every aspect of your life, limbs heavier than usual, pen slower when it grazes the page. Soon you start taking tablets each night. Two white ones, no bigger than a baby’s fingernail. For the first time, you begin to dream.

              When February rolls around you take your exams. Pass with the grace of a swan in everything except AP Calculus. You say you’ll try again next semester, but you don’t. You apply for Yale, Cambridge, Harvard, Columbia, Ashcroft. You wait. And wait. And wait until it feels like your skin has shed itself since the letters left your hands, before an envelope comes marked Theresa. No one ever calls you that name. Right from the start it’s been Tea, Tess, Thea, common names in your house as fickle as the tide that swallows it. Billy’s never been a William, and Sebastian sounds all wrong. You can scarcely remember what Brodie’s short for. Rejection after rejection until Ashcroft answers the call, a cawing in the dark of a wasteland you’ve not yet walked. You’ll read literature, follow in the footsteps of Ginsberg who you clumsily try to quote as you bid the girls goodbye, a bonfire and the smell of cinnamon whiskey. 

iii. ashcroft university, edinburgh. 

              You’d read of a boy who went missing there. It happened in the woods. Seventy years and all they’d found was an emptied bottle of wine and one shoe. Newspapers claimed involvement in an elite society, perhaps a hazing gone wrong, and you imagine them burrowed in underground tunnels wearing wellington boots and tweed. This is what draws you to Ashcroft ; to Imperium. It’s not so much the mystery of it —you’ve never seen yourself as a Nancy Drew — but more the idea of living in a place where people can disappear. That’s always been an idle fantasy of yours. One day, you wonder if you’ll write yourself out of the world and into the pages of a book, nestled between a title and contents page.  

              From Concord to Boston, then a ten-hour flight ; for the first time in months, you sleep through the night. A line break cancels your train and you have to take a replacement bus service instead. By the time you reach the school, the open day is almost over. You feel it at the gates, like a tingle on the back of your neck, something crawling down your spine. It only grows as you close in on it. It feels like it knows your own heartbeat. You’ve never known a building to have so much soul. You imagine yourself walking the cobblestones on the quad each day, climbing the steps to a dormitory, sprawled on a library table, scribbling frantically, willing the clock hands backwards. It’s a life you want to lead.

              In a matter of months, Ashcroft has become not only your home but your life. You are utterly consumed by it. You meet Lysander at a poetry reading. You recite Shelley. He recites Keats. He compliments you on the steadiness of your voice, clear as a bell. A voice for the stage. You tell him your father had a powerful voice. It’s a lie. You’ve never had a father, but it’s fun to imagine one slouched on the couch, wire-rimmed glasses on the end of his nose. He invites you to dinner the following week. Grilled sea bass and risotto. You don’t have the heart to tell him you’ve become a vegetarian, swallow each mouthful with your pride. You try out for the orchestra, though your hands shake a little too much and you hear more from the inside of your own head than the keys. You leave without waiting on an answer. It’s too contained for you, anyway. You need something more chaotic, like jazz. You wish for chaos, so Imperium opens it jaws and swallows you whole. They like you because of your voice, a voice that speaks scarcely more than a low whisper in life, but when written wins you a Bysshe-Shelley Prize. In poetry, you give that voice to the voiceless ; bring dead girls buried in the woods out of the ground and into being, like soil in your hands. A voice like that is a powerful thing to have in your ranks. It becomes every page in your diary, every catch of your skirt on a tree branch, every rap of your fingertips against the desktop, imperium, imperium, imperium.

              You’ve never been able to do things by halves — you always let them consume you. One glass becomes a bottle. One paragraph becomes scrawling until sunrise. Obsession takes its form in Hamlet, strong in all the ways you appear weak. You like the smell of his breath when he tells you to stub out your cigarette. That’ll kill you one day, he says. I know, you reply, and your pretty lips curl upwards. One drunken night, you fall into his bed and imagine stitching yourself into his sheets so you can sleep with him every night. Tongues on your thighs like a voice in your throat. Touch me, touch me, touch me. Never been held like this before. Like you’re not glass, but something material and robust. You like the way his hands feel under your skin. Perhaps you’ll keep him there like a splinter. Tall for your age but thin as a rail, he makes you feel like more than an eel of a girl. You like the way he catches on your spindly elbows where others have snagged leaving trails of cotton. At first, it’s only physical, but you get greedy and want more. You’re not sure when a love of beauty became something more than skin deep. You’re not sure if you even loved him until he’d stopped loving you. In October, you find the body. The day all the clocks stop ticking. The day something inside of you snaps like the branch of an elm.

              You become a cocoon, velvet ribbons in your hair and rope around your throat. Or maybe it’s lace, and you’re only imagining it that way. You drink wine, stumble blind-drunk through the woods, lose textbooks to nature and curse when you can’t find them the following morning. Most nights, you appear like a ghost in the wood, a linen nightdress with mud clinging to it’s hem and feet laden in soil. You’re not sure if it’s conscious at this point, or mindless sleepwalking. Everything you do feels like sleepwalking these days. Shadows move in the corners of your eyes at night and you turn to the tarot cards for answers. They tell you only of that which you already know. Death. The Hanged Man. High Priestess. You think of Octavia, of Lysander, and of you pulled like a ragdoll between them, with the intuition that comes from living by the sea but without the evidence to execute it. The pills have stopped working. You wake in sweats, guilt swelling in the pit of your stomach. In a therapist’s waiting room, you watch as a girl scratches the skin off her own arm.

              Soon news of your occultist proclivities becomes gossip on everyone’s tongue. Witch becomes a synonym for your name, and one you’ll happily wear like a noose until you’ve stolen Lysander from the drop. Finding the truth becomes the only thing keeping you sane, runes scrawled on the walls of a dormitory where pages of novels are tacked up like wallpaper. And still, you can’t shake the fact that she hasn’t come to you when the others who scarcely believe in such phantomed are rattled by her ghost on a nightly basis. Competing and girlhood go hand in hand, but the longer it gets, the more it feels like she knows your desperation to absolve Lysander isn’t entirely selfless. Perhaps she saw you lingering in doorways, waiting in the wings for him to change his mind and tell you it was you all along. Or maybe the sight of her corpse is making you search for answers in places they don’t exist. You’re hanging on my a single thread, one glimpse away from fleeing to the woods to plant yourself into the earth.

              The snow is crisp on the November ground when you learn to love melancholy like a dance you were taught as a child. You think it adds depth to being a writer. How can a person write about pain if they live in a state of blissful oblivion? You tell yourself that all of the best writers were depressed; Plath, Fitzgerald, Dickinson, Rice. If you say their names each morning, followed by your own, perhaps you’ll become one of them. 

BULLET POINT SUMMARY.

here is a bullet point summary of theresa, as i understand my writing can get a little dense.

Mother always said that people who grow up near water are different to other people. That there’s something more primal in their bones. A kind of knowing.

In Theresa, the knowing is a kind of silence. She’s always struggled with verbal communication, and it’s rare that she can ever let herself go in a conversation. She’s the one on the outskirts of the group, only speaking up to deliver a poignant metaphor, before fading off again. On a good day she’ll ramble, perhaps, on morbid longings and fascinations, but it’s like she’s always skipping around words she can’t quite pinpoint. 

Writing’s different. When she’s writing, she feels like all the dead souls of Emily Bronte and Virginia Woolf and Sylvia Plath are all rising up from their graves to possess her. It is, perhaps, a rather egotistical thought -- but it makes her feel less alone. Like writing isn’t so much a solitary pursuit as it is a reigniting of what’s been lost, a way of listening to the dead. She’s militant in the way she writes, has been for as long as she can remember -- every night when the clock strikes twelve. Even if she’s rolling on mandy in an abandoned warehouse or dropping acid in a shipyard with her toes in the sand, she’ll start scribbling at twilight, for as long as she can. Back home, there weren’t too many bars that allowed underage kids, and the ones that did would nail your phone to the wall like you’re living in the eighties, so they made their own fun getting high in places long since infested with rats on baggies bought cheap in the back of the dry-cleaners shop.

Theresa’s always felt more able to relate to dead people than to living ones. That might sound depressing, but she doesn’t think so. Death has never been far from her. She grew up in the room of a foster sister who had died the previous winter. She lost her mother to a boating accident at twelve years old. She lost Octavia last year, found her body in the woods, and was thankful that she -- and not someone else -- had seen her crumpled like a fawn. Because even though it clings to her and burrows under her skin, she knows how to drown it out now. In words. In wine. In pills crushed against the veneer of a sink and snorted through a twenty-dollar bill. She’s getting good at losing herself completely. Theresa herself feels like a girl half-dead, like something ghostly, trapped between two planes. Which is why it hurts so much that she still hasn’t seen Octavia’s ghost. She’s supposed to be the special one. The one who’s vision isn’t clouded by idle dogmatism. The one who believes in all that fate, juju, third eye stuff that the others seem to scoff at. It feels like a personal attack. Like somehow, in keeping hidden, she’s blaming Theresa for her death.

Theresa is the month of November. There’s something mysterious about it, something cold. It’s on the cusp of the end of the year, but it doesn’t quite reach it. I feel like that’s what Theresa’s like. Always reaching for the apples that are just out of her grasp, or perhaps, reaching for apples which aren’t even there. 

She knows grief like an old friend, but somehow, she still doesn’t trust it. When she was twelve years old she lost one of her mothers. Annie was always the brighter of her parents, and Tessa never really believed that someone so full of life could just disappear. Her soul had to be somewhere. When Kath remarried, Theresa never forgave her. Between grief and anger, their relationship became fractious, and Kath decided to send her to boarding school. She went to a New England college where she learned art, history, literature, english, athletics, the sciences and the classics. Boarding school was probably the best decision for Theresa that Kath had ever made. She became fascinated with the girls around her, so feral and wild in their girlhood. She fell in love with another girl more than once. She fell in love with the freedom of New England, of being in the woods, of a gaggle of girls with bottles of wine sat around a campfire, scared half to death that the matron would find them.

But death’s never far from her. She’s been searching for Annie in the linebreaks between poems, in the chaos of clutter under her bed, under lace and linen in her underwear drawer, but somehow she can never quite find her and never give up.  Finding Annie was perhaps the reason she came to Ashcroft at all. She intended to go to Columbia, read Literature, and clumsily follow in the footsteps of Ginsberg. But Annie had spoken of Edinburgh with such a childlike awe.

Lysander was the first of the society she met, at a poetry reading in the autumn of her first semester. He brought her into the club because he saw something in her, an otherworldliness, a still but powerful voice. Her eyes saw more than they let on, always glinting at something more. She thinks her closeness with Lysander is the reason she still hasn’t seen Octavia’s ghost, and now Hamlet’s out of the picture she’s starting to think she might love Lysander. Or maybe she just needs to be loved by someone, and absolving him of blame is the key.

She was never really sure how she felt about Octavia. One moment they were friends, the next they were rivals. It was something like love and hate combined, but perhaps that’s just the curse of being a woman. A fierce sense of competition in everything you do, even if it’s just competing for air.

She likes old French music, European cinema, art that doesn’t come in her mother tongue. She’s always thought English pointless. The French say things so much better.

Her favourite TV show is Twin Peaks. She likes the absurdist truth in it, the style, the colour, the oddness. She likes the mystery of it all. She loved the woods in New England and it reminds her of that. A kind of home away from home. Tea brings a pocked dictaphone out with her, for she’s so often absent-minded that she misses half the day. That way, she can replay conversations, the sound of a bird in flight, the particular inflection in the voice of someone she loves. She’s obsessive when it comes to lovers. She doesn’t want to be loved -- she wants to be respected, understood, devoured. She thinks love is a kind of mutual lying.

She finds truth in the unusual. In tarot cards and horoscopes, in the position of the planets through a thrifted telescope. She’s a night owl, never in bed before 3 or 4 in the morning. She visits the woods each night to write until her fingers ache. Sometimes with wine, sometimes with mushrooms, sometimes with a tab against the flat of her tongue, imagining herself to be Alice in Wonderland. She feels like she’s getting close to the truth, but maybe she’s just closer to losing her mind.

LETTER TO OCTAVIA.

My dearest O,

I wish I could find an adequate way to write you an epitaph. You saw a poet where everyone else saw a foolish dreamer and yet you’re the only one I can’t put into words. But in truth, there is no word large enough to contain you. You were the ellipsis I was always looking to conclude, and it’s so like you to steal even that from me. Some days, I think I could love you.  

Please know that death cannot touch girls like us. That you’re more than just skin, teeth and bone. Death itself has you only on a short-term loan. As Thomas puts so eloquently, Do not go gentle into that good night. Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Thank you for filling me with life. I’ll see you in the next one.

Tea.

anything else?

mock blog.

 pinterest 

wanted plots.

someone who theresa knows purely from seeing them at the library. recently, she hasn’t been visiting as often. she’s less in the world and more in her head. her schoolwork is suffering. someone who feels this absence like a missing tooth.

unlikely bc ashcroft is in scotland but if they’re from rhode island maybe distant relatives.... ophelia / theresa is adopted so could work regardless of heritage. her family lived in narragansett, but she went to boarding school in vermont. could have met if ur character is new england based??? maybe

give me fellow wanky pretentious art-lovers and poets and historians who will go to museums and galleries with her and listen to the velvet underground on vinyl

people she gets mortally fucked off her tits with at parties bcos this baby is not alright. she drinks at least one glass of wine every night. sometimes a bottle. she’s always a little bit high or a little bit weary with a comedown. she can’t seem to keep her feet on the ground.

theresa was pretty numb after finding the body, as you would be. she stayed in her room listening to enya for three days straight and just eating cereal straight out the box. then thalia broke up with her and that fuckin shook her too, and now she just thinks she’s unlovable. she’s always been pretty bad at sleeping but now she just wanders about in her white nightdress looking for a door with light spilling beneath it so that maybe she can find someone who’ll hold her for the night and make her feel like she’s still alive

she’s currently hooking up with a lot of people. a lot of very detached sex, so if she has any sort of close connection with your character this might not work. could be good for angst or awkwardness though, or she cld get like.... super attached after a one night stand and complicate the shit out of everything. theresa’s kind of obsessive when it comes to her affections, she loves with her whole heart or not at all

people she used to date or unrequitedly likes, but to them it’s just a physical thing, give me all the thirsty angst plots, and maybe some softness too, i need some religion in this girls life jesus 

honestly everything just give me all the plots

[miccatepoztli]

Annoyingly Long and Obnoxious Meta On Ximena’s Magic Aura. 

No editing, we die like men.

To begin, we are going to assume some things.

First: let’s assume that a person’s aura is real and connected to both their personality and heritage. When I say heritage, I don’t just necessarily mean where a person comes from. I mean their parents. Their ancestors. The things that they did and accomplished. Because in my little fantasy headspace, physical blood is important.

Second: let’s assume that this aura can be sensed the same way we sense food, cloth, music, etc. Some people can see auras, some can smell them (like Ximena can), and some can taste them or hear them or physically touch them. Maybe you can even do more than one, but I expect that would be a lot of overstimulation.

Third: let’s assume that if auras are real, and they can be sensed, that they may also be hidden or amplified. A private person or someone who does not want to be noticed (like Ximena) may, in theory, cloak/conceal/hide away their aura from others. If in a situation that requires a certain level of passion (say, intimidating someone during a battle, comforting a loved one, or grieving), one can indeed do the opposite of hide and show others that aura. You can show your enemy the dangerous avalanche of your emotions. You can let your loved one feel protection and warmth. You can have your aura play the sad sounds of your mourning. 

All of these displays of auras is completely abstract, of course, I imagine it’s similar to synesthesia.

Now, let’s get a little more exciting and add magic into the mix.

For this idea, let’s use my general interpretation of what magic is and how it works (because if there’s a solid explanation, then it stops being magic and starts being science fiction): all living things, and even some non-living things that are natural (ex. rocks, dead flowers, sea shells) exude/produce magic. There are magic reservoirs and special areas of the world where magic is stronger. Some places where it is weaker. Magic moves like wind. Like currants. Magic is hella alive. It probably has a conscience.  It is one being and several beings at once.

Certain magic sticks to certain people. It creates somewhat of a symbiotic relationship. Give and take. The magic effects the person, and the person effects the magic. Certain things will come easily to the person because of the type of magic that has attached themselves to them/the type of magic that bends to their will. People who have never broken a dropped phone. People who never forget a birthday. People who have never gotten in an accident. People who always win bingo. People who always have the attention of the people in a room the moment they walk into it. People who always get the last slice of pizza. These are little magicks.

But! Living things includes, of course, humans. Humans can produce magic, but not at the same high rates as other creatures, such as goblins, fae, hulders, mermaids, what-have-you. For most humans, this magic is very difficult to unlock, and most never do it in their lifetimes, instead letting it build up until their deaths when it goes back out into the world (in a Harry Potter or FFVIII verse, the humans who are able to unlock it, are wizards/sorceresses).

So then, a review: Auras are real. They can be sensed. They can be manipulated. Magic is real. It is alive and everywhere. It sticks to certain people. They have strong influences on each other. Humans produce magic too, but it is very small, and hard to unlock. If you can unlock it, you’re Special.

Now, magic becomes physical when a spell is cast. When a potion is brewed. When a sigil is drawn. Turning water into wine, making a sleeping draught, carving runes...You’re bending magic into a shape/form. Creating a purpose. It can also become physical once it blends in with a person’s aura.

It takes time, I think. At first, maybe in infancy (or perhaps even in the womb?), the magic mixes with the aura like oil and water. You can shake them up (lol) for a temporary mix, but they will separate naturally. As time goes on, and the person grows and develops their personality, that same symbiosis relationship takes place with the aura and the magic until they are close to one and the same. The more blended they are, the easier it is for people to control their magic/have it do what they want it to do.

It also means that magic can be physically manifested when blended far enough with an aura. It can be sensed.

It is incredibly difficult to physically manifest your magic. To have it actually physically affect the world around you. It’s even more difficult to control it like this. It’s basically RAW ORGANIC MAGICKS™, and that shit is dangerous when it’s not filtered through spells or potions or any other form of performing magic.

It is also much much easier to sense a person’s magic than just a regular aura.

A person’s magic in physical form can be a lot of things. Fire, electricity, clouds, petals...Honestly this is the part where you should just let your imagination run wild because A) who cares, world building is fun, and B) every person with magic is different. As said before, the aura of a person depends on their personality and heritage. And magic affects the person binded to it and the aura of that person.

So, let’s get to Ximena. Spoilers! For her past, if that matters to you (I’d appreciate it if your muse didn’t automatically know these things unless we discuss them first):

Ximena was born in a cenote through ritual/magical means. From TripSavy: “A cenote is a deep, water-filled sinkhole in limestone that is created when the roof of an underground cavern collapses. This creates a natural pool which is then filled by rain and water flowing from underground rivers. The word cenote comes from the Mayan word dzonot, which means "well."” Ximena was also visited and drowned as a young child by La Llorona in a river after a flood when she went in deep to collect water, as the well she would have gone to was destroyed.

Water is the element of change, of which Ximena knows much about. It is why her magic is very water like. Cool and running/flowing. Dark. If you were able to touch/brush against Ximena’s magic, it would feel like your hand was submerged in running water. Cold. Soothing. But despite the gentleness of the current, it is very unyielding. It’s strong. Persistent.

Her magic feels old and ancient, as many cenotes are. It is also because of her particular family curse, of which includes (among other things) involuntary and often painful immortality. The magic that attaches itself to her has flowed through the veins of her father. Her grandmother. Her great-grandmother. Her great-great-grandmother. And the rest...

It is also old magic because of the (unknown to her for the longest time) powerful protective magicks on her beaded azebache bracelet (a bracelet meant to protect against the Evil Eye/evil intentions), crafted by and given to her by her father as a means of tricking the curse on their family. It feeds her magic.

The magic on this bracelet is much more powerful than hers, and if someone can naturally sense magic auras, they would be able to read the bracelet’s instead of hers. A means of diversion. Protection. Let’s hope she doesn’t loose it. The details of the magic of this bracelet are for another day, another post.

The color of Ximena’s magic is a lovely deep forest green. Healing and natural. Like the earth. A cenote is both earth and water, and this is where they meet. It’s an elegant color that brings about images of comfort and sturdiness. As she grows older and a bit more open/coy, blue will trace slowly into the edges. But only just.

As a result of Ximena’s spirit line, her magic also has an element of lightning. Her family, much more outspoken and spitfire than she, lingers in her aura and magic. When you dip your hand out of the water, it lingers like electricity in your fingers. Tingles playfully. It is also because Ximena is made up of contradictory things. Bold and meek. Just and selfish. Playful and studious. Water and electricity. 

Now the smell: Ximena’s usual scent is just clean laundry. The girl’s hygiene is impecable. She’s a breath of fresh air. Her own musk/sweat/natural scent is mild with strong wood/earth undertones. Her magic smells like citrus and mint. Both plants. Sharp and fruitful. Cool and smooth. Oranges are, naturally, Ximena’s favorite fruit, and one must wonder which affected the other first...Mint is a dangerous plant, as it consumes and grows rapidly over any other living thing in your garden if you’re not careful. It must be contained.

Taste is a little strange, because what person would go into a person’s personal bubble with their tongue out? (insert dirty joke here, lmao, I’m as mature as a 13 year old boy) But in the same way you can probably taste the scent of a steak cooking or taste the after-taste of an iced tea you drank a minute ago, you can taste magic. And Ximena’s magic is tangy. Like ginger beer. In fact, because I’m a bartender, I can tell you exactly what to mix in order to get a good approximation. 1oz Grand Marnier Orange Liqueur, 1-2 lemon wedges, 2 dashes agnostura bitters, shake lightly with ice, pour over ice in rocks glass, top off with half ginger beer, half Prosecco, garnish with mint and orange rind. If you’re not old enough to drink, replace Grand Marnier with freshly squeezed orange juice and the Prosecco with grapefruit soda.

The sound of Ximena’s magic is bells. Her themesong? Classic Mexican folksong: El Cascabel. The url for this blog? It’s the Nahuatl word for bells, literally meaning death metal, because whenever the church bells would ring, it would be for the death of someone. The ultimate goal of Ximena’s family? To be able to one day reach the afterlife, breaking this shit curse. 

Without her magic, Ximena’s aura would probably just be blue. Cobalt blue blending into cornflower blue. It would still feel like water, but less like a river, and more like gentle rain pricking at skin. It would taste like hard candy, similar to a lemon cough drop. It would smell like petrichor. It would still sound like bells.

If you’ve made this this far, I thank you. This will be all for tonight.

[pd101s2prompts]

Vampire AU. Joining a Kpop idol survival show has been a great way for them to feel both alive and dead at the same time.

Long post below. Just posting some AU ideas and listing the top 20 as vampire/human/half, but feel free to ask what the other trainees would have been. Or change/add whatever your imagination/heart desires.

Some HCs of this world:

- Asia has a high number of vampires in their population because unlike the Western half, they didn’t start a witch hunt and send their vampires hiding. There’s a couple hate crime and discrimination here and there, but nothing big.

- Full vampires are labeled as T (turned) or P (pure/born full-blooded). Turned vampires don’t age for decades then age super fast with health problems. Or could be their Asian genes (I’m Asian too chill). Full vampires age really slow like the opposite of dog years. 140 years old would be 20 for them. Mnet releases the ages they should fall under.

- Like blood transfusion, vampires- half and full- only feed on humans that share their blood type. O being universal donor and AB being universal receiver.

- Mnet released a statement saying the trainees cannot feed on each other and will have standard blood bags during meal time. They are not allowed to be seen drinking blood outside of meal time.

- Of course blood bag for vampire tastes like lukewarm bagged milk for humans so they sneak bites on their consenting fellow trainees in places that can be covered. They also have to make sure not to take too much blood to avoid suspicion during practice.

- Some vampires make feeding feel good and some don’t. Due to an evolution thing, some of them have a “sexier” side that most people dub their vampire-mode. Other humans see it as a reversal charm on stage (ex. Sewoon).

- Half vampires are born from vampire/human parents regardless if it’s not 50/50. They cannot be turned into full vampires and blood for them is like calcium. They need enough to be healthy, but the quantities varies from people as too much can cause an upset stomach.

- Half vampires can be fed on but that makes them hungry faster. Also, full vampires need to have an acquired taste for them like black coffee.

- Vampires here aren’t nocturnal. They just look dead from gaming/being online at night. #relatable

- Supposedly, fans believe vampires have more appeal to be kpop idols- eternal visuals, memorizing voice and all that, but there’s really a pro and con to any race.

List: (With who they’re currently helping/feeding on)

If I knew their RH +/-, this list would be more selective. Feeding list may be mismatched until I proofread it again.

20. Lai Gaunlin - Human. O. Was Seonho’s blood bag until Seonho was able to find more kind hyungs. Has offered himself to his hyungs too, but makes them feel flustered because he’s so young and “needs the energy to train and debut”. Seonho has vouched his blood tastes really good despite being Made in China. (”Aish this kid, I’m from Taipei!”) (He wrote China’s Taiwan once so I don’t know how I’d interpret his stance along with what’s politically correct.)

Helps: Seonho

19. Jung Sewoon - Half. AB. Doesn’t need to feed on blood as often compared to a full vampire, but stretches out the time he should be for too long which makes him listless/sleepy/tired looking. Really dazed until someone offers themselves to him because he’s too picky about food (ex. pizza) and only drinks fresh blood. Otherwise, he’ll lose control... People joke he has a church oppa and dark oppa side. Apparently, they feel like a prey under his gaze and it feels really good when Sewoon feeds on them.

Feeds on: Hakyeon, Youngmin, Hyungseob, Jaehwan, Dongho, Minhyun, Jinyoung, Daniel

Helps: Jihoon

18. Joo Hakyeon - Half. B. Just a mixed of different blood. Is told his blood tastes like if someone took every type of juice (including veggies) and dumped it together. Monitors his feeding because he’s strict about his health/diet. Strangely finds no problem with the blood bags. Reminds him of what he had back home.

Feeds on: Jaehwan, Minhyun

Helps: Sewoon, Jihoon

17. Im Youngmin - Half. O. A sweet alpaca that normally fed on Donghyun and afterwards had Sewoon join their trio (Youngdongpo woo). Is happy for making it this far but lowkey stressed because he doesn’t have Donghyun and all his friends (ones he’s confident enough to ask) are people who have been eliminated/have different blood types/ones that feed on him. Maybe Sewoon can ask Hyungseob or Jaehwan...

Feeds on: N/A

Helps: Sewoon

16. Yoo Seonho - Half. A. Eats a lot of food to make up for his blood hunger. Adapting to three meals a day was hard. Takes the blood bags that other people don’t want/offer. Hates the taste, but he’s a hungry child. Fed from Minhyun once and got addicted. Is a greedy eater and needs to be forcibly stopped. But his puppy eyes... Is known for having a strong vampire-mode on stage- especially if his glasses are off.

Feeds on: Gaunlin, Hyungseob, Minhyun, Samuel, Daniel

15. Choi Minki - F Vampire. O. One of the oldest vampires on the show. Rumored to be from nobility. Majority of the human/half trainees have offered their neck to him (even if they’re not his type in many ways). They’re surprised to see he’s not as regal as the rumors or composed as how he looks. (Of course if they watched the variety shows...) Not very strong either but his stare is enough to pin a man down. Feeds exclusively on Minhyun.

Feeds on: Minhyun

14. Ahn Hyungseob - Human. O. Too cute to feed from. Jk, he had been Yuehua’s blood bag, but shy away from letting anyone feed from him until Oh Little Girl (because of Euiwoong~?). Is told his blood tastes too sweet like a milkshake, but with only the toppings.

Helps: Sewoon, Seonho, Jihoon

13. Kim Jaehwan - Human. O. Knows having type O is good. Offers himself only to people he’s teamed with at the moment. The trainees believe his blood must have main vocal properties. Hasn’t given blood to Sewoon yet despite their friendship and knowing each other before until...

Helps: Sewoon, Hakyeon, Seongwoo, Woojin, Jinyoung, Jihoon

12. Kang Dongho - Human. AB. Keeps being mistaken as a vampire. Because of his blood type, his bandmates don’t feed from him. Because of his strength, vampires don’t (dare) feed from him. However, there are some AB vampires that he has offered to help so they don’t take too much from their friends.

Helps: Sewoon, Jihoon

11. Hwang Minhyun - Human. O. Is NU’EST’s “blood bag” but not really because the members don’t feed from him if their schedule is packed, or they’re filming/dancing a lot which has been the whole duration of PD101. They do sneak occasional bites, and he’s been nice enough to let a few dongsaeng feed after a rough practice.

Helps: Sewoon, Hakyeon, Seongwoo, Woojin, Jinyoung, Seonho, Minki

10. Lee Daehwi - Human. A. Was scared of Dongho until he found out Dongho wasn’t a vampire (they’re the human half of Playing with Fire). Lived in California where like Koreatown, vampires live and had establishments in pockets of avoidable area. It was only after moving to Japan/Korea did he get a better understanding of real vampires and not kdrama ones. Is considered virgin blood because he hasn’t been bitten...yet. Is lowkey glad his friend, Jinyoung, is blood type B.

Helps: N/A

9. Yoo Jisung - T Vampire. B. Was glad he got turned before he got any older (lol). Doesn’t want to feed from anyone younger than him which makes his dongsaeng feel sad cause they want to help. They give up cause Jisung drinks as much blood as a half.

Feeds on: N/A

8. Ong Seongwoo - F Vampire. A. Part of the only vampire family in his church. Seongwoo is very vocal when he's hungry and will even sing about it. Gets told his feeding is too ticklish and people can’t help but squirm/laugh (which makes him extra careful of his biting).

Feeds on: Jaehwan, Minhyun, Daniel

7. Kim Jonghyun - T Vampire. O. Was turned in an accident after debut making him NU’EST’s second vampire. Doesn’t want to bother anyone and knows Minhyun has his hands full so he suppresses his hunger. He’d have enough if he didn’t give some of his blood bags to Seonho too. Has declined Guanlin’s and Jaehwan’s repeated offers, but is trying really hard to make it to the end of the show without caving in.

Feeds on: Minhyun

6. Park Woojin - F Vampire. A. Only has one fang. Is really strong and can bench press his meal. Knew Daehwi in his early stage and thought he’d would be too annoying to feed from. For some reason, people’s hearts always race when he feeds from them even though his feeding is painless. (Woojin-ah looks handsome up close~)

Feeds on: Jaehwan, Minhyun, Daniel

5. Kim Samuel - Human. A. Grew up around many full/half vampires in Pledis. No one tried to feed from a tiny child, but they were very affectionate with him and tried to practiced their charms on Samuel. His blood tastes really refreshing like coconut juice.

Helps: Seonho, Jihoon

4. Bae Jinyoung - Half. B. Gets told he looks like a full vampire...a lot. Originally gloomy and scared his race would make it hard for him to make friends. Got to try fresh blood for the first time on the show. Wishes he could bite Jihoon back for real.

Feeds on: Jaehwan, Minhyun

Helps: Sewoon, Jihoon

3. Ha Sungwoon - F Vampire. A. Didn’t know how the feeding situation would work and came super prepared to the dorms. A full vampire known for his flawless unaging skin like a turned vampire. Also known as part of the PVC- not plastic polymer, but Popular Vampire Circle which includes Jimin, Kai, Ravi, and more. Sticks to blood bags for “sanitary” reason, or Taehyun. but now that he’s eliminated...

Feeds on: N/A

2. Park Jihoon - F Vampire. AB. Is known to be a beauty in the human and vampire population (much to Minki’s initial displeasure). Acts very sweet and cute, but occasionally his rough/dark side comes out. Feeds a lot and is always a healthy flush of pink/red. His tongue is an indication he has a craving. Has fed on second to most trainees after Sewoon. Even though he needs blood more, he prefers feeding on his friends like Jinyoung and Samuel. Jihoon knows he's not the only person that wants to taste Daehwi aka Produce 101 Center’s blood~

Feeds on: Sewoon, Hakyeon, Hyungseob, Jaehwan, Dongho, Samuel, Jinyoung, Daniel

1. Kang Daniel - Human. A. His relatives are descendants of vampire hunters and he has training, but Neil doesn’t care about that stuff. Daniel knows his family would flip if they saw him getting this friendly with vampires. He has no problem letting Lee Woojin or Seongwoo feed on him, and offered himself if anyone needs it. He’s a strong and healthy boy! (He says as he gets a thumb injury...)

Helps: Sewoon, Seongwoo, Woojin, Jihoon

Bonus:

21. Kim Yongguk (Jin Longguo) - ? ? The only statement Mnet released to the trainees was do not try to bite Yongguk or let him bite you. That made things awkward in the beginning and it seem that he was shy himself. But everyone started to warm up to each other, and got to bring Yongguk into the circle right before he got eliminated...

They still don’t know what he is or his blood type...