#identifying zombies

[joncronshawauthor]

10 Signs You're in a Zombie Apocalypse: A Survivor's Checklist

As a devotee of zombie fiction, you’re doubtless well-versed in the signs of an impending apocalypse. However, in the unlikely event that you’re caught unawares, here are ten definitive signs that you’re living through a zombie apocalypse. After all, forewarned is forearmed – quite literally in this scenario. Facebook Mastodon Reddit Threads X The Sudden Lack of Morning Traffic: You wake…

[ghostinthegallery]

Around Halloween there's obviously a lot of Warhammer horror stuff going around and while I know objectively flayed ones are one of the most horrifying things in the setting, have you considered that that's actually just a little guy? He's lonely and misunderstood? He's just mentally ill and if making my skin into a fashionable bonnet with help then maybe that's fine? Did you ever think of that?

[dexaroth]

should i try and play along with/incorporate zombie motifs given all my scars and the way i limp sideways bc of scoliosis and the literal muscle rot or should i just go ahead and kill myself

[puppppppppy]

this is the kind of thing ive been trying to put into words for years when i try to tell people what kind of stories i want. i hope you dont mind if i add on to this, but as an aroace who loves soulmate aus, id love to read a soulmate story that expands on this.

what if soulmate marks are something youre hardly conscious of, whether you have one or not? if youre destined to meet your soulmate when youre 58, is it worth it to see other people despite that? if you meet your soulmate in kindergarten, would you feel the rest of your life feeling tied down or think nothing of it? what if people shared soulmates, and you found yours in a group of friends? what if you get your soulmark at a tattoo parlor, perhaps not to will something into existence, but to avoid awkward questions and pitying looks? what if soulmates could be earned, and one day you wake up with a mark on your wrist because someone decided you're important to them?

how does this shape our expectations for love or sense of privacy? do strangers sometimes helpfully check your nape or the back of your ear "to see if you missed a spot," despite how creepy and uncomfortable it feels? do our eyes gravitate to fingers for rings when we form our impression of someone? are we supposed to fall in love with our soulmates, or can they be a friend with benefits or a best friend?

everybody’s always on writing prompts like “what if there was a world where everyone had a timer ticking down to their death… but you met someone whose timer said infinity!” or “what if everyone had their cause of death tattooed across their forehead… but you met someone whose forehead said THE CREATURE!” Enough -

enough. stop with the shock value. there is no need to insert THE CREATURE; the benign concept of such a world is horrifying enough. not even in urgency, but just in banal, everyday interaction. imagine you meet someone and their timer says two years. not tomorrow, not urgently soon, but two years. enough to do quite a lot. they could fall in love in that time - could they get engaged? have a baby? you might otherwise get to know them, befriend them, but perhaps you opt not to, make a conscious choice not to invest in your own grief. what balancing act would every individual person have to participate in - I have ten years, is that long enough to be a good mother to children? is that long enough to secure a caretaker for my own mother? my wife will die a few months before me. my newborn’s timer reads nineteen years.

and cause of death. you interview for a job and emblazoned across the healthy, smiling face of the HR lady is MALNUTRITION. your country is prospering, safe, but every person you meet on the street from the babies to the old women read BOMB. BOMB. what kind of havoc would fate wreak on the world? what about the loss of privacy? how would that shape our notions of hope? idk man I think a lot of those ancient poems were right, and the fates are monsters. I’m interested by the framing of these ideas as trite horror tales when the premises themselves are so much more disturbing if simply taken to their logical ends

[worldheadcanons]

i've also been thinking a lot about vamp mattie after i've seen a couple of drabbles of that au... ik most ppl see him as the type of guy to be a werewolf but please please hear me out 🫦 i know for a fact vampire mattie would be even freakier than usual and would definitely entertain the idea of turning y/n into one as well (without really thinking abt the consequences) ohhh and him speaking in french too. oh la la

i’m going to list out my thoughts because i am autistic & have several things to say:

i am a HUGE fan of the boys (the tv show abt the fucked up super heroes) and while watching that show i quickly likened the seven to a sort of exclusive coven of vampires. this is correlation between the seven & vampires is easy to draw considering their powers + the way they prey on humans — esp homelander & the deep, two conventionally attractive men who often prey on women in particular (a reoccurring theme in vampire tales)

^^ on the note of that, i think most vampire fuckers are just normal, esp with the modern vampire archetype. you guys are not outside the box monster fuckers. you are thinking of a pale white, oftentimes wealthy man who happens to prey on other people — wow! so new! so innovative! /sarcasm. i think people forget how scary vampires are. at least, to me, they absolutely are scary. they blend in with humans, they are human, yet they leech off our blood. which is like, our life essence. it is horrifying because it can be connected to real life easily!!!!

1p mattie is a vampire; 2p mattie is a werewolf.

you’re absolutely right about him wanting to turn reader 😭 none of that twilight “i don’t want to hurt you” bs. he wants to make you his vampire lover NOW. you have to fight to hold onto your humanity. i think vampire mattie wld deff be less of the brooding, tortured monster vampire & the more traditional charismatic one that preys on people. & i mean that positively. he was likely born a vampire so he has none of that “i lost my humanity” stuff going on.

i like when people have him speak french bc i speak french lol 👍 like rough french but still. same w francis. i don’t find the language sexy automatically, only when certain ppl speak it but i will say it is a beautiful language. i think portuguese (br) is sexy however.. and certain english accents r hot too. hmu if ur scouse lol.

[eightspringdays]

im so fucking stupid. i was always so touched watching them hug that I just fucking realized denji and pochita were fucking CRYING im gonna KILL MY-[gets silenced by the illuminati]

[veunho]

Man, russian rock SLAPS

[yatgb]

Shiver is team zombie. We were literally destined for each othwr

[doyoulikethissong-poll]

The Cranberries - Zombie 1994

"Zombie" is a protest song by Irish alternative rockband the Cranberries. It was written by the lead singer, Dolores O'Riordan, about the young victims of a bombing in Warrington, England, during the Troubles in Northern Ireland. The song was released on 19 September 1994 as the lead single from the Cranberries' second studio album, No Need to Argue. While the record label feared releasing a too controversial and politically charged song as a single, "Zombie" reached number 1 on the charts of Australia, Belgium, Denmark, Germany, and Iceland, and spent nine consecutive weeks at number 1 on the French SNEP Top 100. It reached number 2 on the Ö3 Austria Top 40, where it stayed for eight weeks. The song did not chart on the US Billboard Hot 100 chart as it wasn't released as a single there, but it reached number 1 on the US Billboard Alternative Airplay chart. Listeners of the Australian radio station Triple J voted it number 1 on the 1994 Triple J Hottest 100 chart, and it won the Best Song Award at the 1995 MTV Europe Music Awards.

The Troubles were a conflict in Northern Ireland from the late 1960s to 1998. The Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA), an Irish republican paramilitary organisation, waged an armed campaign to end British rule in Northern Ireland and unite the region with the Republic of Ireland. Republican and Unionist paramilitaries killed more than 3,500 people, many from thousands of bomb attacks. One of the bombings happened on 30 March 1993, as two IRA improvised explosive devices hidden in litter bins were detonated in a shopping street in Warrington, England. Two people; Johnathan Ball, aged 3, and Tim Parry, aged 12, were killed in the attack. 56 people were injured. Ball died at the scene of the bombing as a result of his shrapnel-inflicted injuries, and five days later, Parry lost his life in a hospital as a result of head injuries. O'Riordan decided to write a song that reflected upon the event and the children's deaths after visiting the town: "We were on a tour bus and I was near the location where it happened, so it really struck me hard – I remember being devastated about the innocent children being pulled into that kind of thing. So I suppose that's why I was saying, 'It's not me' – that even though I'm Irish it wasn't me, I didn't do it. Because being Irish, it was quite hard, especially in the UK when there was so much tension." The song was re-popularised in 2023 after it was played after Ireland games at the 2023 Rugby World Cup. It was picked up by fans of the Irish team, with videos of fans singing the song in chorus accumulating hundreds of thousands of views on social media. This offended other Irishmen, who identified it as an "anti-IRA" anthem, and said that that the lyrics failed to consider their experience during the Troubles.

The music video, directed by Samuel Bayer, was filmed in Belfast, Northern Ireland, in the heart of the Troubles with real footage, and in Dublin. To record video footage of murals, children and British Army soldiers on patrol, he had a false pretext, with a cover story about making a documentary about the peace-keeping efforts in Ireland. Bayer stated that a shot in the video where an SA80 rifle is pointed directly at the camera is a suspicious British soldier asking him to leave, and that the IRA were keeping a close look at the shoot, given "the British Army come in with fake film crews, getting people on camera.” While "Zombie" received heavy rotation on MTV Europe and was A-listed on Germany's VIVA, the music video was banned by the BBC because of its "violent images", and by the RTÉ, Ireland's national broadcaster. Instead, both the BBC and the RTÉ opted to broadcast an edited version focusing on footage of the band in a live performance, a version that the Cranberries essentially disowned. Despite their efforts to maintain the original video "out of view from the public", some of the initial footage prevailed, with scenes of children holding guns. In March 2003, on the eve of the outbreak of the Iraq War, the British Government and the Independent Television Commission issued a statement saying ITC's Programme Code would temporarily remove from broadcast songs and music videos featuring "sensitive material", including "Zombie". Numerous media groups complied with the decision to avoid "offending public feeling", along with MTV Europe. Since it violated the ITC guidelines, "Zombie" was placed on a blacklist of songs, targeting its official music video. The censorship was lifted once the war had ended. In April 2020, it became the first song by an Irish group to surpass one billion views on Youtube.

"Zombie" received a total of 91% yes votes!

[friendlyneighborhoodshark]

"How to Life" Masterlist

Cleaning and Tidying

Make your bed in the morning. It takes seconds, and it's worth it.

Reset to zero each morning.

Use the UFYH 20/10 system for clearing your shit.

Have a 'drop-zone' box where you dump anything and everything. At the beginning/end of the day, clear it out and put that shit away.

Automate your chores. Have a cleaning schedule and assign 15mins daily to do whatever cleaning tasks are set for that day. Set a timer and do it once the timer is up, finish the task you're on and leave it for the day.

Fold your clothes straight out of the tumble dryer (if you use one), whilst they're still warm. This minimises creases and eliminates the need for ironing.

Clean your footwear regularly and you'll feel like a champ.

Organisation and Productivity

Learn from Eisenhower's Importance/Urgency matrix.

Try out the two-minute rule and the Pomodoro technique.

Use. A. Planner. (Or Google Calendar, if that's more your thing.)

Try bullet journalling.

Keep a notebook/journal/commonplace book to dump your brain contents in on the regular.

Set morning alarms at two-minute intervals rather than five, and stick your alarm on the other side of the room. It's brutal, but it works.

Set three main goals each day, with one of them being your #1 priority. Don't overload your to-do list or you'll hit overload paralysis and procrastinate.

If you're in a slump, however, don't be afraid to put things like "shower" on your to do list - that may be a big enough goal in itself, and that's okay.

Have a physical inbox - a tray, a folder, whatever. If you get a piece of paper, stick it in there and sort through it at the end of the week.

Consider utilising the GTD System, or a variation of it.

Try timeboxing.

Have a morning routine, and guard that quiet time ferociously.

Have a folder for all your important documents and letters, organised by topic (e.g. medical, bank, university, work, identification). At the front of this folder, have a sheet of paper with all the key information written on it, such as your GP's details, your passport details, driving licence details, bank account number, insurance number(s), and so on.

Schedule working time and down time alike, in the balance that works for you.

Money

Have. A. God. Damn. Budget.

Use a money tracker like toshl, mint, or splitwise. Enter all expenses asap! (You will forget, otherwise.)

Have a 'money date' each week, where you sort through your finances from the past seven days and then add it to a spreadsheet. This will help you identify your spending patterns and whether your budget is actually working or not.

Pack your own frickin' lunch like a grown-up and stop buying so many takeaway coffees. Keep snacks in your bag.

Food and Cooking

Know how to cook the basics: a starch, a protein, a vegetable, and a sauce.

Simple, one-pot meals ("a grain, a green, and a bean") are a godsend.

Batch cook and freeze. Make your own 'microwave meals'.

Buy dried goods to save money - rice and beans are a pittance.

Consider Meatless Mondays; it's healthier, cheaper, and more environmentally friendly.

Learn which fruits and vegetables are cheapest at your store, and build a standard weekly menu around those. (Also remember that frozen vegetables are cheap and healthy.)

Learn seasoning combinations. Different seasoning, even with the exact same ingredients, can make a dish seem completely new.

Misc

Have a stock email-writing format.

Want to start running, but find it boring? Try Zombies, Run!.

Keep a goddamn first aid kit and learn how to use it.

Update your CV regularly.

Keep a selection of stamps and standard envelopes for unexpected posting needs. (It happens more regularly than you would think!)

[theastrophysicistnextdoor]

The Ineffable Detective Agency presents: Decoding 1941 Hell – The Hidden Morse Messages

The Good Omens team never fails to surprise us: In the Hell scenes set in 1941, there are subtle beeps in the background that many might have missed: morse code messages! 

We took the time to decode these messages from about 5 minutes of the show – some parts are easy to identify, some parts are really hard due to overlying sounds or noises. 

We used the 5.1 audio and selected only the channel with the morse signals. Check out an easy snippet – which line is it? :)

Then, we applied high- and low-pass filters to emphasize the code’s pitch around 1360 Hz. Some of us have pretty sharp ears, some of us worked with the frequency spectra to mark short and long signals as well as pauses in between. 

Here is what we have heard or seen, together with some facts and thoughts on the lines. Let us know what you think!

S2E4 06:19 to 08:23 “Have a miserable eternity”

Here are the pieces we have successfully decoded: 

HAVE A DREADFUL ETERNITY

We are wondering why this is different to the text via loudspeaker as well as Furfur’s “have a miserable eternity”...

TOMMY’S A LEGEND

Do we know a Tommy?

1) There's the Welsh magician/comedian Tommy Cooper (his magical act specialized in magic tricks that appeared to fail), who was the inspiration for the red fez in the magic shop. Cooper died live on television suffering a heart attack. :(

2) There's also the lead character Tommy in Brigadoon, the plot of which feels seriously GO-coded. There is a magic village hidden outside time that only appears in Scotland once every 100 years and is connected to the rest of the world with a bridge, outsiders who find "clues about the village and its people that make no sense", and a plot about unlikely lovers who are separated (because one "can't just leave everything in the real world behind"), and an ending that reunites the lovers against all odds because of the strength of their love ("I told ye, if you love someone deeply enough, anything is possible ... even miracles.")

PAUL’S OUR MIXING HERO

Could that be the Re-Recording Mixer PAUL McFADDEN?

ABANDON ALL HOPE YE WHO ENTER HERE CHEER UP IT’S ONLY ETERNAL DAMNATION ABANDON ALL HOPE YE WHO ENTER HERE CHEER UP IT’S ONLY ETERNAL DAMNATION ABANDON ALL HOPE YE WHO ENTER HERE CHEER UP IT’S ONLY ETERNAL DAMNATION ABAN

The phrase "Abandon all hope, ye who enter here" is a quote from Dante’s Inferno, Prelude to Hell, Canto III, Vestibule of Hell: Dante passes through the gate of Hell, which bears an inscription ending with the phrase "Lasciate ogne speranza, voi ch'intrate". So, the minisode is THE place where we get quotes from the two most famous literary accounts of Hell – with Furfur's quotation of Paradise Lost in the dressing room at the Windmill Theater: "In dubious battle on the Plains of Heaven". 

S2E4 09:16 to 10:09 “Processing the Nazis”

ABANDON ALL HOPE YE WHO ENTER HERE CHEER UP IT’S ONLY ETERNAL DAMNATION ABANDON ALL HOPE YE WHO ENTER HERE CHEER UP IT’S ONLY ETERNAL DAMNATION

S2E4 11:07 - 13:12: “The offer to return as Zombies”

These two minutes are very tricky: while in the first half it is ok-ish to identify the signals in the spectrum, the second half is overlaid by so much noise… – yes, we are calling the dialogues and sounds in hell noise now :D – that we chose a different approach. 

It looked as if the sequence starts from the beginning, so we compared both parts, and now we are quite sure that it is the same pattern. 

DO NOT LICK THE WALLS HEAVEN LOOKS DOWN ON YOU BECAUSE YOU ARE PATHETIC ABANDON ALL HOPE YE WHO ENTER HERE CHEER UP IT’S ONLY ETERNAL DAMNATION DO NOT LICK THE WALLS HEAVEN LOOKS DOWN ON YOU BECAUSE YOU ARE PATHETIC ABANDON ALL HOPE YE WHO ENTER HERE CHEER UP IT’S ONLY ETERNAL DAMNATION DO NOT LICK THE WALLS HEAVEN LO …

So those are the sections we are pretty certain we have correct. However, there is one section we are still unsure on - maybe you can help?

Back to S2E4 06:19 to 08:23

We have been fighting hard with the first six seconds, before “HAVE A DREADFUL ETERNITY” and we think it is:

SHE’S IN MA PHONE

Who are we talking about now?

Do you have any other ideas of what this could be? If it is “She’s in ma phone”, what does that mean? Or is the S just noise and it starts with an H? Or even with a B – BE’S IN MA PHONE?

So, what are your thoughts on all of these messages? Why go to the effort of putting morse code here? Is it a fun easter egg, or something more? And why say “dreadful eternity” in morse when the quote used in the show is “miserable eternity”? We have so many questions!

Spoiler: There is more code hidden throughout the series.  Let us know what you see or hear!

-... .    -.- .. -. -..    - ---    . .- -.-. ….    --- - …. . .-. 

An amazing joint effort with @noneorother, @kimberleyjean, @thebluestgreen, and @embracing-the-ineffable at the @ineffable-detective-agency (with the incredible @maufungi, @somehow-a-human, @lookingatacupoftea, @komorezuki, @havemyheartaziraphale, and @dunkthebiscuit)

See more of our posts, plus a collection of Clues and metas from all over the fandom, here.

[rallamajoop]

So why are there so many gay vampires?

From the time of Carmilla all the way up to the works of Anne Rice (a universe that seems to get only less subtle as the years go on), gay vampires have been a thing basically as long as anyone was writing about vampires. Lesbian vampires have been a genre all their own for decades. Bram Stoker, author of the most famous vampire novel ever written, was gay himself. So why vampires specifically?

I’ve seen people attempt to answer this one before, and there are all sorts of contributing factors I could point to here, from the genres’ beginnings with Lord Byron (infamous bisexual disaster fuckboy), to modern discourse about why queer folks so often find themselves identifying with the monsters and outcasts of fiction. Few other monsters besides vampires can so easily pass for ‘normal’, or are nearly so well known for their snappy dress sense and ‘unnatural cravings’ for human flesh. And that’s without even getting into all those skeezy outdated stereotypes casting queer people as predators, or the idea that even one ‘gay experience’ could somehow ‘convert’ you into being one yourself.

But to my mind, there’s just one really important thing that makes vampires so gay, and it’s the same thing that makes them sexy in the first place: plausible deniability.

You see, a vampire’s bite is simultaneously a) ridiculously sexual, and b) not even a little bit sexual at all.

You don’t have to look far for vampire canons where there’s nothing sexy about being bitten by a vampire. Bloody, violent, painful, sure ‒or just clinically miserable, human bodies torn open or hung up to drain like a human blood bag. What’s sexy about getting bitten by a mosquito, or a fecking leech? The diet of the actual vampire bat requires it to process so much water that it apparently spends mealtimes busily pissing out the difference, and the anti-coagulants in its saliva leave the wound bleeding messily long after it’s gone. The basic act of feeding is no more inherently sexual for a vampire than it is for a zombie.

Vampires are even a surprisingly acceptable monster to market to children. There’s a vampire muppet, a cartoon about a vampire duck, and a whole series of books about a vampire rabbit. You can put a vampire on the side of a cereal box without undue outrage. Vampires do not have to be R-rated for sex or violence.

So of course vampires will go after victims of the same sex. Do you stop to inquire whether the cow you’re eating was male or female? It’s all just predator and prey!

Until it’s everything but.

Do not let the ‘vampires aren’t supposed to be sexy!’-purists fool you. The tradition of sexy vampires goes all the way back to the oldest folklore, where the first victim of a newly-risen vampire was often their still-living spouse. Vampires were even occasionally known to get women pregnant (a convenient excuse for any widow who might turn up pregnant slightly too many months after their husband's death). The ‘original’ Nosferatu sounds more like an incubus than the naked mole-rat creature they made that movie about. The demon lover aspect of the vampire has been there all along.

And it’s not hard to imagine why. If someone is biting and sucking on your neck, then either they’re a vampire, or they’re well on the way to second base (other folklore has its vampires feed directly from their victim’s heart, which is scarcely less suggestive). The implications of an exchange of bodily fluids were never subtle, even in Stoker’s day (I'm looking at you, Lucy-with-the-three-husbands), and the vampire as a sexual predator was a popular literary device well before Stoker's time. Beautiful vampire women would seduce men to their demise, and the males of the species might visit the bedroom of some innocent maiden time and again. The Victorian obsession with mesmerism, meanwhile, provided the perfect explanation for how victims might be hypnotised into eager compliance, and perhaps not even remember being fed upon at all. Vampires have been the ultimate guilt-free sexual fantasy since way back in the day, compatible with all your awkward Victorian mores! (Not quite ready to admit they're sexual fantasies? No problem: he's just here to, y'know, suck on your neck a bit. No subtext here!)

The whole act of biting is so suggestive that in the early years of vampire cinema, it wasn’t shown at all, not even between opposite-sex participants. The camera of 1922’s Nosferatu maintains a demure distance during the climactic scene where the heroine is finally bitten and slowly drained of blood, and Universal’s Dracula conveniently fades to black or cuts away whenever it’s about to take place. But even if the biting has to take place off screen, who’s to say a vampire isn’t going to pick victims of both sexes?

The stately tradition of the lesbian vampire has cinematic examples going all the way back to 1936, with Universal’s Dracula’s Daughter. Though the titular vampire has a nominal male love interest – a psychologist who naively advises her to confront her temptations without fear – the result of his advice is a famous sequence where she picks up a young woman under the premise of wanting an artist's model, and convinces her to remove her top. No actual biting or nudity is shown (it was only 1936), but her fate is left in little doubt.

By the era of 70’s sexploitation, all such subtlety had been abandoned. If we’re all good with naked boobs, who’s going to be offended by a little biting?

In fact, when it comes to men rather than women, a vampire bite was, for many years, far too sexy to be shown, or even alluded to. Nosferatu clearly feeds on that film’s Jonathan-expy, but our only evidence is the bitemarks on his neck in the morning, and the final sacrifice to defeat the evil monster must naturally be female. Universal’s Dracula had to ignore explicit studio mandate that only the brides should be allowed to feed on their own Jonathan-equivalent, as to even imply that Dracula himself had fed upon a man was obviously far too homoerotic to contemplate (never mind that it’s Dracula who must be established as the threat in this opening sequence, or that it’s Dracula his victim will spend the rest of the film obsessed with).

But in that unspeakable land of male-on-male homoeroticism, you might be surprised how much homo we can squeeze in even without resorting to fangs-in-necks. The Lost Boys is surely one of the most homoerotic vampire films ever made, but there, the one big blood-drinking scene is rendered in a bloody massacre of slasher-movie violence. And though Anne Rice certainly describes the scene where Lestat drains Louis of blood in lurid detail (and even has them spend their first sunrise together sharing a coffin), Louis is already thoroughly seduced before he ever reaches this point.

You see, the lore of the pop-cultural vampire conveniently comes with a second and equally-compelling target for plausible deniability: the act of making a new vampire.

Obviously, to work, this has to be deliberate. A world where anyone bitten by a vampire becomes one hasn’t much to offer us, and the relationship between maker and fledgling can just as easily be framed as parental, as recruitment into a cult, or purely transactional. But whichever way you twist it, the implications of choosing another to share in your own eternal youth and immortality… like, I don’t have to spell this one out for you, do I? Did I mention how that thing where a vampire’s traditional first victim tended to be their own mortal widow goes all the way back?

But if we’re not ready to be completely obvious with our mainstream audience, some alternative explanation can always be provided for cover. Lestat doesn’t really want Louis, he just wants Louis’ money! (He also really wants Louis.) The Lost Boys just want Michael to join their gang! (Their very, very pretty gang, who swan around in mesh shirts, tank tops and assless chaps.)

The two sides of the vampire-deniability coin aren’t mutually exclusive, either. Carmilla drinks her new paramour’s blood, but also gazes into her eyes while promising her you will be mine. Drinking blood is a key part of making a new vampire in so many vampire stories, after all.

Carmilla isn’t even the only gay vampire story of the Victorian era. I recently posted about two other fascinating examples, both featuring male/male pairings: one being pretty much just a gender-flipped version of Carmilla, and the other a tragic love story filled with significant "vampire = gay lover" metaphors (why oh why must the townsfolk keep us apart, when we’ll only ever be happy once we’re united once more?) This stuff goes surprisingly far back.

In fact, you can find queer subtext in vampire fiction that predates even Byron and Polidori. 1819's The Vampyre was the first published vampire story, yes, but the first known work of vampire-fiction in the English language is a poem published by John Stagg in 1810, also called The Vampyre (look, the genre didn’t exist yet, you didn’t have to be creative with your titles).

In brief, Stagg’s poem recounts a conversation between a wife (Gertrude) and her dying husband (Herman), whose dear friend Sigismund, lately deceased and deeply mourned, has returned as a vampire. Night after night, he crawls into Herman’s room to drain his blood. Herman’s fate is already sealed, but unless Gertrude takes action, it will surely be she that Herman will take as his own first victim when he rises from the grave.

There may be nothing intentional about the queer subtext of this tale. A vampire’s victims often include friends he knew in life, as Stagg himself cites in his introduction. But if Herman’s first victim will be his wife, what are we to read about the fact Sigismund’s first victim is Herman? Especially given how long he’s kept secret from poor Gertrude that his dear ‘friend’ has been climbing into his bedroom each night, lying beside him in bed and sucking and draining "the fountain of my heart!" while Herman moans and tosses (in pain, obviously!), always leaving him "exhausted, spent." Ultimately, Gertrude is saved only when both Herman and Sigismund are staked through the heart, and we close on the image of them slumbering together in the tomb.

It is, however you turn it, pretty gay.

I reiterate: this is the very first known work of vampire fiction written in the English language. The second was the one that was kind-of-written-by, kind-of-stolen-from, and unambiguously based on bisexual-disaster-fuckboy Lord Byron. And the two most influential works of vampire fiction of the next hundred years would be Carmilla, the very lesbian vampire story written by a… presumably straight man? And Dracula, the not-completely-convincingly-hetero story written by #1 Walt Whitman fanboy Bram Stoker. Vampires have always been very equal-opportunity kind of monsters.

There are, of course, plenty of influential heterosexual vampire tales to fill out the roster too. Varney the Vampire, a penny dreadful from the 1840s, was so successful it ran for over 200 chapters. The 1960s had their own wildly successful Varney-equivalent in the soap opera Dark Shadows. Love it or hate it, we really can't ignore Twilight either. My own introduction to the genre was Christopher Pike’s The Last Vampire series, which came out alongside the original Vampire Diaries novels. So there's plenty of material around to keep the straights entertained – and honestly, that’s only as it should be, because the very thing that makes vampires so queer-friendly is that the sex of their victims doesn’t matter. And it’s so easy to make vampires sexy (let alone a full vampire-proposal!) that even the Victorians could do it.

Now, if your reaction to all this theorising is to tell me "but the LGBTQ’s shouldn’t have to hide behind plausible deniability!" I can only counter, "well sure, but why should the straights have all the fun?" Because playing with all the ambiguity of "is this monster really just after my blood or is this going somewhere?" can be all sorts of fun, regardless of the genders involved. And as long as they’re up for exchanging bodily fluids with persons-and-or-victims of either gender equally, why not have some fun with it?

So, okay, maybe the real title of this post should have been "why are there so many pansexual vampires?" But the answer doesn’t change. Vampires have been the bisexual disaster fuckmonsters for as long as anyone’s been writing about vampires, and have been a metaphor allowing people publish barely-coded gay attraction since 1872. And much like the queer community, they’ve only become more complex, more sympathetic, and all the more popular as romantic paramours as the years have gone by.

[notspiders]

Oh, Honey! (Bumblebee! Reader x Monster! 141)

General Warnings: Mostly fluff. Reader is female and is described as rather small and chubby. Reader is clumsy. Reader has a very large family. Characters may act out of character. Poor grammar is likely. Cussing. Part 1??? Note: Monster! 141 belongs to @bluegiragi

~~~~

Price watches you through the window.

Truthfully, he isn't sure how he and his team ended up here. One day they were being chased by a bloody team of zombies/cannon fodder, the next- he's laying on this extremely cozy bed (although it is a bit small) with his wounds nicely patched. Soap has gone hunting with the other women. Ghost is satisfied that they're all safe in this... rather massive cottage and has been snoring away in the next room for the past hour. Gaz has told him that he's going to just fly around and keep an eye out- just in case if the enemies somehow find themselves through the dense woods and into this clearing.

They really were lucky, Price thinks. According to you, the woods were a force themselves. Navigating through it, especially at night, is practically impossible. Compasses don't work. There's no signal and, of course, any type of aircraft just fail here. The woods are miles long and unless you packed enough supplies- it's suicide to dive back in and try to find your way out. It's just that sometimes the woods can help you, and sometimes the woods just gives you Mother Nature's middle finger and kills you. So there's that.

Naturally, the team was suspicious.

1) The explanation made no sense. 2) They were just outnumbered by a ton of enemies and to stumble upon this welcoming lot is... well, it's too good to be true, yeah? 3) You and your family are just way too happy. 3.1) There are no guys in your family. Your mother stated that men generally just wandered in, the family would treat them, and then they go away by themselves after a few nights. 3.2) Honestly, all of you look the same. Maybe there's like, a difference in hairstyles, body types, and obvious age gaps between the women here and there, but Jesus… Gaz has already made the mistake of confusing you, your cousins, your many sisters, and other random girls multiple times last night. 3.3) Scratch out the 'massive cottage' you guys claimed it to be. It's a mansion. Your 'family' is very large. There are many aunts, other women, cousins, other girls that were adopt into the family- Just no men. All living under the same roof and might as well be an army itself with how efficient you all did your tasks.

That said, it's very rude to point guns at innocent, clueless civilians. You, an adorably chubby, little bumblebee-hybrid (identifiable by the two rather pathetic buzzing wings behind your back), opened the door to them last night and stared blankly at their guns before cheerily ushering them in without freaking your head out. Next thing they knew, they got some quality homecooked meals cooked and served before them, plenty of drink (the honey mead everyone shared is excellent), proper treatment with their wounds (with... herbs), and warm beds. Ghost had stayed up the whole night and snooped around (just in case) but reported nothing interesting except for a few old hunting rifles and some overdue library books. Yes, each girl did carry a tiny foraging knife, but he's pretty certain they could still punt them like footballs ten at a time.

Morning comes- the team properly introduce themselves without being too specific of their occupation. There was a great deal of oohing and aahing as Price unfolded his one wing. His smoke did cause one girl to faint and her mother quickly asked for Price to... stop. He did his best and has, for now, stopped smoking his cigar. Everyone just steered clear from Ghost. Many children were petting Soap's head and playing with his fluffy tail, and others were stroking Gaz's wings.

Despite all the attention, Price's gaze is always on you. Maybe it was because of the fact that he's seen you first. You were just the cutest out of all of them. He wanted to whisk you away just to squish every soft part of your body and have you cuddled up beside him in his nest back home.

He's sorely disappointed to be told that he needs to return to bed so that his wounds can heal faster. No matter. The window gives him a very nice view of the clearing outside. Some girls are tending to the farm. Others are beekeeping. Plenty have gone to the outskirts of the forest to forage or hunt. Soap has offered to go out with the girls and they gladly accepted his help. (Tomorrow, he'll get off of this bed and join everyone too.)

Right now, you're picking the berries in your garden. It's amusing to watch you. Sometimes you bend over to pluck a few pretty flowers too- he's gotten a very nice view of your plump arse here and there. He's watched you buzz your small wings to just barely get a foot in the air and pluck an apple off the tree. Oh, how he wished to simply go out to lift you up himself... Your weight would be nothing to him.

From his observations, he's smartly deduced: Your body is round. Your little wings aren't designed for distance.

He loves the way you'd burrow your nose into any flower. Sometimes you remind him of Johnny's eagerness by the way you'd get a bit too enthusiastic and faceplant into the bed of flowers to take in the scent.

Price watches you get up, bump into your cousin (or is it sister? Or is this another girl? He couldn't be arsed), and the two of you collectively squeaked and apologized at the same time. Adorable. Fascinating. Beautiful. He hasn't felt this way ever since the time he xaight the glimpse of the shiny Excalibur in that stupid rock.

The lunch horn has been blown. He's been told that today's meal would be freshly baked bread and creamy chicken with wild rice soup. There’ll be tea and coffee for the drinks.

Price wishes his lunch would just be you.

[cinnamorollcrybaby]

Zombie // Cinna’s Monstertober Writing Challenge

Tags: Zombie!Ghost x fem!reader, smut, nsfw, mdni, monster x human relationship, mention of suicide, crack, this is not supposed to be taken seriously. please don’t take this seriously.

Synopsis: Your pussy is the cure to the zombie apocalypse. Hurry! Fuck your zombie boyfriend before it’s too late!!

An: Guys… I’m sorry for what I’m about to write. This shit is going to make NO SENSE, but hopefully you will get a laugh out of it. Honestly, I just need to write something so silly rn.😭

His three heads watched you in confusion as your body rose and fell along his cock. With his hands chained to the wall behind him and that pesky collar around his neck, you were at no danger of him biting you and turning you.

He was sat against the floor, where he had been since he had turned. He always told you that if he turned, you had to kill him, but when it came time to put him down, you couldn't do it... not when his cloudy brown eyes looked at you like they were scared. You were convinced that he was still in there somewhere.

Up and down, up and down, you were barely even wet.

Realistically, you felt bad for doing this to him while he was clearly not all the way in his right mind. Your boyfriend, Simon, used to love when you rode him. Now, he's just the shell of his previous likes and dislikes.

You wouldn't be doing this right now if it wasn't the only way. The cure to the outbreak of mindless zombies was between your legs. You knew it was! You had spent far too long in your little makeshift lab, testing on your chained up zombie boyfriend to find a cure.

You wouldn't give up on him.

There are various proteins that live within vaginal secretions, and this apocalypse was being caused by a protein malfunction in the brain. Your thought process was that maybe, just maybe, if you could fuck your boyfriend, expose him to the natural, normal proteins in your body, then his body will start to regulate as well.

It was a pipe dream. Literally, you're getting piped. But it was your only hope.

Luckily (or maybe unfortunately) for you, Simon hadn't grown three dicks like he had grown three heads. Three lifeless pairs of eyes stared at you curiously, watching as your hair and breasts bounced with each movement.

"Uhhh..." One of the heads groaned, and he tried to lean into you. A frustrated growl fled his lips as he wasn't able reach you due to the collar.

Maybe it was muscle memory or maybe it was him wanting to bring you towards him, either way he jolted his hips upwards, knocking you forward just a bit.

Your palms smacked against the wall behind Simon to prevent yourself from slamming straight into him. You're too close... He could bite you if he wanted.

You quickly try to lean back before a strange noise caught your attention. Sniff. Sniff.

Was he... smelling your hair?

A grunt of approval escaped his lips, and he jolted his hips forward once again, making you crash into his burly chest. His middle face continued to sniff at you, like an animal who was trying to identify you.

Maybe he really is in there somewhere.

"'m sorry, Si..." Your voice is shaky as your hips are barely moving anymore. "You told me to kill you, but I couldn't do it. 'm not strong like you are."

Plap. Plap. Plap.

Your skin connects with his with each time you come down onto his length, taking him in all the way deep inside you wet heat.

You feel soft ragged breaths tickle your skin as you're still leaning in dangerously close to him. If this doesn't work, you planned on not living anymore anyways. The life that you have been living for months now wasn't worth saving. If you couldn't be with him, you simply didn't want to exist.

His middle face was breathing heavily on your skin, and you could feel his hips trying to flutter upwards to meet your bouncing. "I love you, Si. I'm doing this because.. ngh~ I. Love. You."

A low agitated grunt left his mouth again. It sounded like he was trying to convey something, but you couldn't tell what it is that he needed.

"What is it, Si?" You ask softly as you look towards his undead face. His clouded over eyes search your face desperately before he yanks on the chains. His hips try harder to buck up into you.

"M-more?"

Excited grunts fell from his lips quickly. Your hands found his shoulders next to his new set of heads, and you try to remember just how he taught you how to ride him.

You lean up off of his cock just until his tip is just barely inside before crashing back down with a small yelp. Simon wasn't a small man, and he was well endowed. Taking him all in at once was no easy task, but you continued with that same motion over and over.

To your surprise, your zombie boyfriend leaned his heads back, and his breath became more pressured. You could feel yourself start to gush around him, completely drooling all over his cock.

The scientific portion of your brain couldn't comprehend how he managed to stay hard during all of this, but you chocked it up to the body responding to stimuli involuntarily.

"Urgh... fff-ahh.." One of his heads breathily moaned as you rode him.

His movements were so primal as he thrusted his hips upwards to meet yours. Soon, both of your movements were growing sloppy as both of you chased each other's highs.

"S-so good, Si... mmmph~ just a bit more." You whimper softly as you're hips start to roll. His cock grinds against your gummy walls, making the most erotic sopping noises imaginable. "Fuck... Simon.."

The chains pull taut as Simon growls lowly. Two thuds sound through the room, and his cock is throbbing violently inside of you, filling you to the brim with his seed. Your hips continue to shakily move for just a few moments before you're orgasming on top of him.

"Christ, love." Your boyfriend's gravely voice spoke. Your movements freeze as you have to wonder if you just imagined that. Maybe your brain was just trying to cope with the loss of Simon by hallucinating his voice.

Your head slowly turns to look up, and Simon's brown eyes meet yours - no longer clouded over. "You're a fuckin' freak, yeah?" He teases with his signature grin beneath his mask.

You saved him! Now, you have to tell the world about this news.

read the rest of my monstertober writing challenge here!

[somerandomdudelmao]

Hopping back in the “when did Donnie get sick” train because of your latest update with memory ritual Casey, I think I have a pretty good guess as to what got Donnie.

The very long episode known as episode two, aka “carry the uncles.”

We see them extremely battered, can from the looks of it, both of them have a couple open wounds. While infection can get in though the holes on our faces (nose, eyes, mouth), it can also get in through the bloodstream, where it is usually identified by white blood cells.

Donnie is significantly more battered than Casey, who appears to be severely bleeding though his leg, plastron, side, and forehead. All prime locations to get into the bloodstream unnoticed.

(Another thing. Outsider cells can pose as insider cells, which is usually how stuff like cancer happens. I don’t doubt that when the kraang made that virus they took a few humans to make sure it was extremely lethal and wouldn’t get fucked over by Donnie’s white blood cells, as you said before that the area around Donnie’s grave turned so desolate that even other kraang vines were KILLED by the infection. (Which makes me think it behaves like the fungal virus of the last of us but worse.))

The earliest we see Donnie obviously pull his dramatics is episode six, primarily the first pannel of part two of episode six, kraangified.

This is the very same episode where he perched on Raph by using his spidershell’s arms.

Donnie was most likely feeling the effects even earlier, but because the episodes between 2 and six are more filler and elaboration (and also where people speculate he got it, episode three.) we don’t know.

I should note, people claim he got it in episode three when he ran a kraang over. This is likely not true, as you stated the infection killed kraang vines around Donnie’s grave. Why would you carry it on your body for long periods of time with how lethal it is? Wouldn’t you put it on one of your hounds or zombies?

From episode 6 onward, we see Donnie increasingly get more dramatic and need to rely on his tech more until he, unfortunately, goes poof from this plane of existence.

(One more thing I want to add is that this infection was most likely similar to a fungus or cancer, as it was eating up Donnie from the inside and transforming his cells into other cells, which is most likely how his blood turned pink.)

Anyway, theory time over, thanks again for giving us this wonderful series, can’t wait to see what happens when small donnie realizes why Casey got so upset over big donnie.

Wow, that's one BIG study.......

I'm not going to say anything because you've already said everything. But I will add here one new screenshot from a recent update as confirmation that you're right. Because if you look at the location of his injuries in both pictures....

[elexuscal]

So just over a year ago, I made a resolution to myself to get better at Fitness, since I was getting older and i knew if i didn't, the Consequences would begin to manifest. One problem? Historically i have always hated working out.

i knew there were two main reasons why: 1. lingering trauma from the usual Fat/Neurodivergent Kid Mistreated In PE Class Experience 2. oh my god it's so so so boring i would rather do anything more entertaining.

So. I'm not an expert, and i'm definitely not a professional fitness instructor, BUT i have genuinely come to not just tolerate but actually enjoy exercise this past year. So if these are any problems you personally have contended with, these strategies May Help.

One: Remove Barriers

a lot of flavours of neurodivergence struggle with switching between tasks and executive function generally, especially towards something you don't find fun. So first you gotta identify any barriers keeping you from exercising, and removing or mitigating them.

For me, a hurdle i recognised is that if I could not easily access the equipment, I was unlikely to use it. honestly if i couldn't see it i would probably forget it was there. So my first order of business was making a Work Out Zone. I unrolled my yoga mat and gave it a near-permanent place in my room. my weights came out of the closet and placed on a low shelf where i could easily access them, as did my resistance band. now they were always Right there.

I also realised something I detested was the general feeling of sweaty clothes, and in particular, having to change out of them. So Gross. so i started scheduling my work outs for in the the morning after breakfast or right before my nightly showers, aka: when I am changing in and out of my PJs. I'll do my routine (mostly) naked and not have to contend with the extra steps and laundry that sweaty clothes bring.

two: secondary entertainment

like i said: i found exercise very boring. and while i've gotten better over the past year, and can find it meditative, i still prefer having something else to catch my attention.

i used to like to put on video essays. but then i realised i was so often pausing my work outs because the particular video ended, or the pace got slow, or the topic turned to something dark and depressing out of nowhere and killed the vibe, so then i had to stop to find something else--

No. You need something that will keep you in the zone, and won't knock you out of it. I didn't used to listen to music much, but this year i took advantage of a Spotify subscription my sister gifted me (😔) and started just putting on upbeat rock, hip-hop, and pop mixes. it doesn't need to be my favouirte music ever it just needs to Keep Going.

i do find the loud, rhythmic music is really good for keeping my pace up, but if music doesn't do it for you, you might find audiobooks or autoplaying favourite old tv shows/sitcoms might scratch that itch.

Three: Find Other Motivators

Or, "if you can't make your own motivation, store bought is fine"

Gameification is really good here. You might be someone who'll benefit from a pedometer or step-counter app. I have a friend who swears by the Switch Ring-Fit, and I've also heard of folks who use games like Just Dance, Zombies, Run! and Beat Saber to rely on the sweet sweet endorphins generated by hitting a high score.

(BUT: do beware the dark side of gameification, which is the risk of demotivation if you don't hit your goals. For example, after doing GREAT on exceeding my step goal for a month, I got hit with COVID. For about a week and a half I was barely moving beyond the kitchen and back. My step counts plummeted, there was no way to edit the record out, and that made it harder to get back into the groove. Be mindful relying too much on gameification!)

Even outside of literal games, there are ways to scratch this itch. I used secondary objectives as a way to encourage me to keep up with my daily walks. Walking my roommate's dog when he was working long days is an obvious one, but we don't always have a furry friend at our disposal. Then I would rely on mini-challenges like, "pick up 10 cool rocks to paint", "fill this bag with wood for the fireplace", "take 10 pretty pictures", or "get to the corner store to get more milk".

And of course, consider team sports! Many folks I've talked to feel having set training/play times with a team that relies on them crucial to keep them on track!

Four: Don't Measure Success By Weight Loss

I know. I know. Easier said than done. It does not help that like 80% of workout resources online are going to mention this. but above all else, you must resist the beast. (and while not as dicey, measuring success by visible muscle gain can fall into a similar trap).

The biggest benefits to exercise are invisible. it improves cardiovascular health, brain function, tissue regeneration, immune system function, lung capacity, energy levels, literally our whole body. no matter what external changes your body does or doesn't go through, you're still going to be benefitting from exercise, and you do not want to get demotivated chasing unrealistic/irrelevant goals.

Instead, to track your progress, focus on questions like these:

How is exercise impacting my mood? Do I feel less stressed or anxious?

Am I sleeping better?

Is my balance improving?

Is my stamina increasing?

Am I becoming more flexible?

Can I lift/carry heavier weights?

Is my breath control improving?

Over the last year, I've seen marked improvements in all of these. My joints don't hurt as much; it's easier for me to to get up and move; I don't get winded as easily; I generally feel more relaxed and cheerful. Those are all amazing outcomes, and I hope that everyone on their own fitness journey can find the same joy there as I have.