#forgotten how this works a bit

[kusanagihaku]

happy lunar new year! ˚ ༘ ೀ⋆.˚ sending you blessings and protection from: sinostra!

[beck-nightengale]

Decided to do the template created by jilljoycearts for my Prophetess! These are fun.

And the lovely art featured in this was done by princoxx!

[ghost-bard]

im so sorry but i really truly dont trust anya the child in edge of midnight at all, like most untrustworthy child ive seen in media in a while

[rearranging-deck-chairs]

Hi hello I watched all of carmilla in a weekend when I was 17 because a student teacher who in retrospect I had a bit of a crush on mentioned that she knew one of the actresses. also I am pretty invested in all your recent vampire stuff because I watched iwtv in 2 days last week because your edit intrigued me

oh hiiii 🫶 thank you for indulging me. thats so cool that you watched iwtv! did it live up to the expectation?

i also watched carmilla at 17! or like, 17-19. i found it when s2 had just started and followed it to the end. did something permanent to my brain but i think it was a good thing. on rewatch now im like, i was right to like this. like it's a solid show, it's good. it has its flaws obviously but it's well written, the emotional moments still get me, i can see why i liked it and i still like it now even when it's not anymore, you know, meeting every need that baby gay me didnt even know they had

what it doesnt reaallyy do though - i dont remember if i posted abt this or if i left it in my drafts but - is explore vampirism as a concept. their subject matter is more lesbianism than vampirism. which is great! thats what they wanted to do and they did it and it's very good. but reading interview with the vampire the book rn im realising how much potential vampires have to be metaphors for like so many things and i started wondering like 'wait, did carmilla just not really engage with it or did it all go over my head'. but it just didnt really engage with it all that much. which again is fine bc that wasnt what they were doing. im glad they were more about the lesbianism than the vampirism

but there's this interesting difference in framing, because in iwtv they keep calling armand 'ancient' right? and emphasising how old he is. and he's like 500? and i was like 'wait isnt carmilla like 400?'. she isnt, shes 340, but still, thats getting there, you know? and we know quite a lot about her history, but kind of just the Big Events. when she was turned, the events of the novella, coffin of blood, silas. thats sort of what we know. but none of the long lonely slog of history day to day you know? with armand i feel like we can really feel how much time everything takes. how every one of those years is made up of single days. with carmilla i dont feel that as much. i keep kind of thinking about daniel, when louis calls him a boy in the first episode, saying "im an old man, with all the triggers that come with it"

because carmilla might look 18 (or mid twenties at this point) but she has lived all that time. shes also seen her native land be claimed by like a succession of ruling powers, right? like armand. shes been buried alive, like louis. when lestat is born, shes already 80 years old, shes lived a whole human lifetime, and the entire adult part of it shes been a vampire. shes lived through 1680-1870 being a lure. i compared her to abigail hobbs in some tags on a post, i dont know if youre familiar with hannibal the tv show, but i do also kinda keep thinking about that comparison

if youre not familiar, in the first episode of hannibal the murderer of the week is this guy garrett jacob hobbs who kills and cannibalises girls who resemble his daughter. and later on it turns out she was made to be his lure. like they'd go places and he'd sent her to the victims to make friends and maybe get them back to their home or smth. not sure if they specified all the details. but that's what carmilla did for mother. and in s2 we hear from mattie that while every couple of decades carmilla had to lure victims for the fish god, she also seemed to just enjoy humans between those times, right? like the doctor, gets lonely, gets a new companion. but we've only sort of got mattie's mocking word for it ("dont eat him, hes a poet! or her, shes got such a wonderful voice. or that one, shes just too pretty to ruin"), we don't know exactly from carmilla's point of view what she was doing or why. if mattie's talking about stuff that happened after the blood coffin, 1950-now, then i think it's a fair assumption based on what carmilla says in the s1 sock puppet show that after she'd figured out what the real situation was and what her role in it was, when she'd started trying to save girls from being sacrificed, that she mightve been doing the same trying to save people from becoming mattie's victims. it's probably more likely that she was just trying to find excuses to stop mattie from sucking someone dry rather than actually having like an aesthetic based morality. but it might be a bit of both. im still trying to figure out what her philosophy actually is, like i dont know what existentialism actually means ghkfjghkj but i will

i also found it pretty striking in the movie when shes turning back into a vampire she says like "this was supposed to be done, you know? the blood lust, the self-loathing, the sleeping tied to a chair in my own bedroom". thats what defines her vampirism, wanting blood and hating yourself for it (the third part is a joke/reference to s1 but also i think meaningful for how she sees her relationship with laura when she IS a vampire. little bit of that 'she will reject me for my monstrousness' shining through). and thats what defines vampirism for lots of vampires across the genre obviously, but i dont know, it struck me. we dont get a lot from carmilla's pov, we know a fair amount about her, but the story is always told through laura. we get laura's diaries, but just snippets here and there from carmilla, what shes thinking, how shes feeling

and i love that shes a philosopher. i love that thats how she seems to try and find something to hold onto, in a world that kind of moves around her, having been murdered, kidnapped, turned and groomed to be a lure on the cusp of adulthood, never having been properly loved (the relationship with her father wasnt good she says in s3, and her mortal mother i dont think has ever been mentioned (like laura's)). the only good relationship she seems to have had for the better part of 3 centuries seems to have been mattie, and mattie seems to love being a vampire. i can imagine carmilla just sort of going along with anything mattie wants to do just because shes so desperate for that friendship. not like, against her will necessarily really. but more like, she hasnt even had the space to develop her own will, you know? and philosophy lets you do that. philosophy gives you frameworks to understand the world and to develop your own opinions on it. and by the 21st century she seems to have developed those opinions, she has a sense of her own values, but shes also still stuck in that same situation. shes jaded and cynical in the face of laura's optimism and strong moral code a lot of the time in s1 because she feels probably pretty powerless. like she does what she can to save some girls but at the end of the day shes scared of her mother and she has nowhere else to go really, right?

i like how she grapples with that over the course of the series, in tandem with laura grappling with her black and white morality. she sort of jumps ship from her mother to laura bc theyve fallen in love, but then laura still stuck in her hero thinking refuses to see her monstrous side. not literally bc i think the biological vampirism never seemed to be a problem for laura, but morally. the having murdered. carmilla needs laura to see that and love her while seeing it bc the last girl she loved rejected her for being a vampire.

but you see her kind of swing back and forth in s2. she softens first with laura but then they break up and she leans back hard into the sarcastic cynic defense mechanisms, leans hard into "im a monster, dont expect heroism from me". but thats like, it's sort of learned helplessness i think. it's powerlessness, resignation. bc morally shes not a monster. maybe she doesnt have as strong a drive to help other people as laura does and is a little more selfishly hedonistic in that she just wants to enjoy her/their life, but she doesnt hurt people for fun, she never has. she just sort of didnt have another option for a Really long time. so she pretends she doesnt care. "im a vampire, this is what i do, this is who i am". but clearly from the way she talks about it when she turns back into one, she doesnt enjoy it

and i like how she goes even further in s3, where she starts swinging even more to the heroic side, bc she sees hope. shes like "wow if we kill my mother, i'd be free". theres hope and she becomes like a lot more active. and shes like that at the start of the movie too, a lot happier, a lot more relaxed, and then vampirism is back and bam depression gfhgkjh like shes immediately more gloomy, ashamed of her past and her self, retreats into herself

sorry i just took this as an opportunity to dump all the carmilla thoughts floating in my head on you. you didnt ask fhkghgjh consider this an open invitation to you or anyone else to come talk to me about carmilla

[universalsatan]

okay like. i haven’t read a lot. crippling undiagnosed adhd and probably memory issues have kept me from consuming books since like elementary school. i probably finished one assigned novel in high school and i finally finished a whole novel for fun last year. i’m churning through moby dick slowly atm, but as a decent editor and writer and hence someone associated with the writing community and seeing those booktok recs or whatever…

girl tell me why the first book i open. starts with a fucking. spotify playlist. like, i was Aware that these books were wattpad-level. but i didnt think it was THAT wattpad holy shit

[lotrmusical]

My high school did a yearly poetry recitation contest (Poetry Out Loud), so Oh Boy do I know some poems. My favorites are Ozymandias and "the world is about to end and my grandparents are in love," by Kara Jackson. Also in 8th grade we had a Poe unit and had a class contest to make the best music video of the Raven, so I still know a good chunk of that.

i hadn't heard of the kara jackson one! just read through it and enjoyed it, particularly these lines > 'grandma returns to her love like a hymn, marks it with a color. // when the world ends will it suck the earth of all its love? /will i go taking somebody’s hand, / my skin becoming their skin?'

[dazzelmethat]

Color and shading study. On an elevator. We go on the elevator together.

[andromeda-nova-writing]

I want to read more works from black writers. It's our month, so let's try and promote a work of ours or recommend other black writers that we know and enjoy. I hope this can be a resource for finding and supporting each others work. It doesn't matter for what Fandom. All I ask is all the works are by Black Writers.

So I guess to start this off, Hi. I usually go by Mimikyu. Currently, I'm writing for Genshin Impact. My most recent fic was Unpacking in the Infirmary.

I really hope to see more people add to this! 💜

[ereborne]

Song of the Day: December 14

“He Set Her Off” by Emily Ann Roberts

[viperwhispered]

I kept on talking about it, now I finally did it: put together a few outfits for Emi to wear outside the school uniform - once she has the reason to start filling out her wardrobe in Twisted Wonderland, at least.

Ngl, these pull heavily from what I wore at that point in life, with a dash of wish-fulfillment for extra pizzazz.

First of, the casual - when she doesn't feel like dressing up and is just throwing something on:

Add an extra hoodie or something for colder weather.

The strappy - feels a bit extra but like... she would:

Also works with a dramatic blouse with some flowy sleeves (think Morticia Addams).

(There's also a variant of these two known as the "the boyf's not here and I miss him" with one of Jamil's hoodies, probably the one with the flames that he wears with his school uniform. Particularly prevalent during Emi's third year, when Jamil’s away doing his internships.)

Dressing up, tartan edition:

Dressing up, waist corset edition (prob with the prev shoes, I couldn't bother with repeating elements):

Also works with some long, flowy sleeves and thicker tights.

Also like... feel free to throw in spiked wrist bands and belts and things in there, they're definitely part of the assortment, too.

And like, not to say these are the only things Emi has (there's definitely more of like, basics in her wardrobe too, and cozy oversized things to get wrapped up in), but I feel like these gets the general vibes across, especially for the more standout things she likes to wear.

So yeah, it's like... You can often hear Emi coming just from the clatter of chains, especially when she's taking a seat, lol.

Tagging @scint1llat3 @diodellet @moonyasnow @bibi-cha

If you'd like to be tagged for Emi things, just let me know!

[ranger-danger]

Dnd people who hate rangers are so funny. Oh you love bards, but think rangers are useless in combat? That’s rich. Next you’ll tell me you love monks, but think rangers are too weak. What do you love sorcerers and think rangers suck?

[pynkhues]

I am very very curious about that tower scene because Sam said in an interview that he didn't think Lestat was at the tower voluntarily--so if Armand put him there, how much of Louis' memory of that scene is accurate? Lestat looks very well put-together for a prisoner, and how is he being kept there? So much about that scene felt intentionally odd (even, and you touched on this in your fic, that Lestat says that he wasn't kept in the room with the corpses/"disappointments", whereas he'd told Louis and Claudia that he was kept in a room with corpses).

I'm really curious too, anon! It definitely feels like one that's going to be revisited, probably in more ways than one given Magnus' tower is such a vital location across The Vampire Lestat, and it makes sense that Sam would say that too given Lestat's not there by choice in the book. Like you said, Armand takes him there after the trial (and pushes him out the window to debilitate him further) and I'm curious as to how much of that the show keeps. They've changed a few elements of that sequence already that I don't think can be reversed - like Claudia's dress ending up with Louis for instance, not Lestat - and the bigger fact of Louis seeing Lestat then at all when in the book Armand tells him Lestat died in the theatre fire even though he knows he didn't).

You're right though that it's an odd scene, both between how good Lestat looked (but then Louis' memories of how he looked at the trial too were coloured by other emotions given the revisited scenes at the end showed how unwell he actually looked) and that change in what Lestat tells Louis about where he was kept in Magnus' tower feels pointed given 2.08 spends quite a bit of time pointing out its own deliberate inconsistencies with s1 moments.

I think like a lot of these scenes, Louis' memory of it will be a partial truth, but it lacks the context that we have (and he now, at least, has some of). I also kiiind of imagine Lestat and Armand are probably talking to each other too with the mind link in that scene, but obviously we're not privvy to if that's happening or what it might entail yet.

I can't wait to see what they do with it.

[sableeira]

finished my bachelor project a few days ago btw I’M FINALLY FREE

[autism-disco]

how am i supposed to focus when. the book

[cannibalisticskittles]

i said before that in a modern au amity would be some type of lawyer, probably specializing in either labor or environmental law (Hello Esteemed Motherfuckers Whose Profit-Hungry Actions Have Measurably Made Life Worse For Real Human Beings. Are You Prepared To Have Your Ass Handed To You In Court? c: ) but the more i think about it the more i lean towards her very quickly leaving the legal field and instead trying to make a difference by working directly for a nonprofit/charitable organization instead that let her feel like she's taking a more active, boots on the ground approach to things, and then occasionally providing legal advice

like, the knowledge of law and ability to argue a case is tied in with devil shit -- she already knows the intricacies of laws and contracts and is very persuasive, so it makes sense that that might translate to specializing in law in a modern setting. however. she doesn't spend a lot of her time involved in laws that way.

like, given a devil's contract and a week or so to pore through all 396 pages, yeah, she might be able to find a loophole or a clause that can be exploited to help someone out of that contract. but you know what's sometimes quicker and easier? murder. if your problems definitely can't be solved by murder, sure, yeah, she'll put in the time and effort to be a rules lawyer for you. but it's not her preferred first approach.

so i think that it would make sense for her to pursue that kind of career initially with pressure from her mother (who definitely wanted her to join her law firm, which is the equivalent of one of the layers of the nine hells and it's just staffed by super efficient super sharky devil lawyers; the pivot towards the fields that amity would have been drawn to would have been very distasteful to her mother, who would convince her to go into something more profitable with some bullshit argument and amity would reluctantly defer to her mother even though she hates it) and then realize after a while that.... this kind of sucks and she hates doing it and she intends on leaving that behind only a short time after she like, passes the bar or whatever

however. i think after a while if her mother continues to try to pressure her, amity will say "you know what, you're right. i should go back into law." but instead of joining up and working the same place as her mother, amity starts handling cases for the nonprofits she's working with and taking on pro bono work which absolutely unequivocally puts her in direct conflict with her mother's firm

[becauseplot]

thinkin abt attempting a qphilza + qmissa qpr/nonconforming relationship fic. the idea has been living in my head rent free since like early june and ive never worked up the courage to write it bc mcyt fandom's relationship with qpr is,,,yeah,,,and a lot of the lore will be """outdated""" and i risk messing up their dynamic bc missa hasn't been on the server for a while (understandable) and im not that familiar with qmissa in general because language barrier (im trying i swear) and i LOATHE getting characters wrong but. what if. i did anyway. would ppl enjoy it.