#i am practicing environments

[iababa]

wip sneak peek below vvv

[minteetho]

noraml environment.study . noyhing to see here folkd

[apoptoses]

I’ve been thinking about vampires and cultural norms, and how culture shapes people and their expectations. And it got me thinking about the scene in queen of the damned when Daniel struggles with the burial of his first corpse -

And I've seen divided opinions on whether Armand is being an unkind maker here, or if this was the first warning that maybe Daniel wasn't cut out to handle vampirism well and that his madness was inevitable.

But I've never seen the facts concerning the treatment of the dead throughout history, and that Daniel, up until this point had probably never really seen a corpse.

For every other vampire we'd met in the VC up until this chapter, corpses were part of daily life. And not just in the fact that coming across a body in a medieval city or in a filthy backstreet of 18th century Paris was entirely possible, if not downright unavoidable in times of plague or during the Terror. But also because people of all cultures used to care for and sit with our own dead.

For centuries the loss of a loved one meant the family washing their body, laying it out in the home for relatives and friends to come visit. Death was a fact of life, caring for the corpse was part of the grieving process. Louis would have experienced it with his brother Paul, had the house not fallen into chaos Louis might have pushed Lestat to do the same with his father. Had mortal Armand lost a sibling, or a grandparent, he would have seen their body before burial.

And though embalming has existed for ages, it didn't involve the modern heavy wax makeup applied to the body to help it maintain the semblance of life. It was more about preventing decay during the wake period than distancing viewers from the fact that they're seeing a corpse. In fact when one 18th century mortician made a body look too life-like with his new techniques and displayed it to advertise his practice he received a great deal of criticism.

Plus we've all seen the photos of the victorians with their dead- to have the whole family pose with a body for one last photo was the norm, not the exception. There was nothing disgusting or morbid about it.

At the turn of the 20th century a couple things happened to change all of this in the United States specifically: one was the sudden leap in advances in medicine and germ theory, the other was WWI and WWII.

There was a great book that I read (and that I wish I could remember the name of, if this sounds familiar to anyone please tell me) which went into detail about how the mass casualties of the world wars combined with the new and previously unimaginable injuries wrought to the bodies by new weapons and bombs caused such great psychological trauma that death practices in the US were forever changed.

People no longer wanted to wash, display, and sit with their dead. And changing standards for hygiene and the medicalization of the body meant that the dying no longer remained in the home, that the body was swept up and taken from deathbed to morgue to funeral parlor at much greater speeds than in the past.

So by Daniel's time the American 'wake' had gone from a multi-day at home affair to something carried out in a funeral parlor, with a body embalmed and covered in wax makeup to the point it looks less like a corpse than a wax figure, and where viewers step up to the casket, have a quick glance, and then leave.

And outside of unusual and traumatic circumstances, people just no longer saw bodies. If he had a grandparent pass in the home the body could be collected by the coroner in a matter of a handful of hours. If they passed in a hospital then in all likelihood Daniel would have never seen the body at all up until the moment it was dressed up and put in makeup for the viewing.

(If they had a viewing, and not simply skipped the whole process and went straight to closed casket funeral and cremation)

And this doesn't even begin to go into what happens to the body after death that people of the past would have been aware of, but which is no longer common knowledge now, like the way the bowels go slack and empty themselves. And god knows what a body fully drained of its blood would look like.

So for Daniel to experience shock at handling the body of his first kill is hardly a surprise, given the cultural context he grew up in, or that he seemed to have avoided burying the remains later as we know it had to be impressed upon him to be careful with covering up his kills. And for Armand to assume seeing and handling a dead body should be a normal event that one could handle with some detachment isn't a surprise either- even as a mortal he would have had contact with the dead.

(Plus you add what's going on with Akasha and the burnings and you have a really high pressure situation for everyone involved)

It's a cultural issue in some ways. And one I wish Anne had gotten into with modern, newly made vampires more: the ways we handle guilt, grief, and death are deeply connected to whether we treat death as a part of life or sanitize death and distance ourselves from it.

[squiggl3]

Places

[abirddogmoment]

someone at (pet) dog school tonight asked me what kind of dog rory was and I told them and they said "oh so like a cocker mixed with what?" SIR 😭😭😭😭

[nanami-is-nanamean]

In the middle of writing the worst day of hs!gojos life and like-- ive been thinking abt this hc for actual years so i might as well drop it here while im figuring out how to Put Words Onto Page

I imagine that pressing a hand against Gojo’s Infinity would give you a sense of extreme vertigo. Kind of like Kenjakus giant ass catfish curse that made Yuji think he was falling, but somehow both infinitely (heh) worse and better.

Better because hey, at least the feeling is isolated to the limbs that are against Infinity, and Worse because holy shit the feeling is isolated to the limbs that are against Infinity.

Because like... think abt it tho...

Infinity works via achilles paradox-- "any moving object must reach halfway on a course before it reaches the end". Infinity makes that paradox real by giving an infinite amount of halfways between the object and the end. The end being himself.

That would mean then, that whatever object touches Infinity and gets blocked by it, is in a constant state of forward motion, held only in place by the endless halfways it must go thru to reach Gojo. Honestly, as i think abt it more while writing this post, it feels to me like Infinity is kind of like a black hole or bottomless pit. It keeps whatever object moving towards the center (black hole) but it never gets any closer to the point that its basically still (bottomless pit)

Imagine then, what it would feel like if you were the "object" going up against Gojo’s Infinity. Like, not even punching him. Just giving him like, a high five or leaning on him or something of that nature.

You go to pat Gojo’s shoulder to give him some physical affection but as your hand descends to meet the dark fabric of his uniform, it. Keeps. Going. Down. But, you're looking at your hand. Its perfectly still on Gojo’s shoulder. But your hand, it still feels like its moving. And if you're sensitive to motion, this is the part where your head starts to spin/get light-headed, this is the part where your knees get weak. You feel that its still going, why is it still going, its frozen still, but your hand. Keeps. Going. You want to topple over, but you're on still and steady ground and youre properly supported on your feet, but your hand keeps telling you that its still going down down dOWN DOWN DOWN--

And then gojo turns off his Infinity and snaps you out of ur mini panic attack. Oopsies!

[svampira]

let me COOK with this one also everybody clap at least the thumbnail isnt purple

[elftwink]

one thing thats so interesting about being a vegetarian is you get to hear all about everyones hypothetical activism that they care about very deeply when talking specifically about your diet and why it's stupid, but literally will never bring up ever again in any other context

[bluuscreen]

my brain has decided to forget how to draw faces so i guess i’m dedicating the rest of my life to digital paintings of dimly lit bathrooms

[ultfreakme]

Oh I do not like that two of my ships right now has someone that's deeply oppressed on a systematic level in their story having to set aside their own morals and values for their extremely privileged lover who does not bother to truly understand their pain, often trying to make excuses for the oppressors.

[ind1c0lite]

I have a job interview today wish me luck 💪

[enjoliquej]

Yoooo do you have any experience painting scenery or landscape/nature stuff?

No 😔 its one thing I'm practicing with my OCS Lewis and the normal dog because it burns my skin alive when I have to draw backgrounds

[snapcracklepop-myjoints]

local tumblr user forms parasocial relationship with random ass addict, places undue importance on their continued sobriety: more at 11

[kavehater]

Chappel Roan saying she’s sad she’s demisexual and then there’s me being aroace as a whole like don’t you think I’m even more sad 😭

[tea-time-terrier]

Boring dog training? Boring dog training.

(Lots of not dog training)