#lois tilton

[that-dinopunk-guy]

Hell yeah, now I have all but five of the Babylon 5 novels. All I need now are Final Reckoning, Casting Shadows, and the novelizations of In the Beginning, Thirdspace, and A Call to Arms.

I love how the titles on some of these range from boring and utilitarian to amazing:

Also, they chose some interesting angles to show the station from on a couple of these:

[youremyheaven]

Some Unverified Celebs I Suspect to be Theatrical Romantics (TRs)

Carolyn Jones

She is most well known for playing Morticia Addams in the 50s sitcom The Addams Family

She's 168cms but is very petite with short limbs so she appears more delicate and shorter

Her face has Romantic-Dramatic-Ingenue essence which is the basic essence of TRs. She's very obviously a "femme fatale". She appears youthful, kind of innocent but also mysterious and seductive.

She has a very small frame and a delicate hourglass body.

2. Odeya Rush

You might recognise her as the mean girl from Lady Bird. She's often said to resemble Mila Kunis (who is a verified TR)👀

She's 163cm tall, has short limbs and is a very petite hourglass. She also has a Romantic Dramatic Ingenue essence and has those tell tale TR bedroom eyes<3

3. Myrna Loy

She's 168cms and has a very petite delicate hourglass body. Her face has a combination of soft and sharp features and her whole aura screams "femme fatale".

In the 30s & 40s she was typecast in exotic roles, often as a vamp before she established herself as a skilled comedic actress.

4.Debi Mazar

She's known for her roles in films like Empire Records & Goodfellas. She's also besties with Madonna.

She's 165cms tall and is so obviously TR. Look at that face.

She has a petite hourglass body as well.

5. Priscilla Presley

Priscilla is a very well known pop culture figure and former wife of Elvis Presley.

She's 163cm, has those bedroom eyes, full mouth, a mix of soft and sharp features and a petite hourglass body

6. Ornella Muti

She's an Italian actress who was in the 80s cult film Flash Gordon as Princess Aura.

She's 168cms

7. Elizabeth Gillies

You might recognize her from Victorious. Although she's tall enough to be an SD at 170cms, I personally think she's TR since she appears shorter than she is, has shorter limbs and does not have any obvious need to accommodate vertical.

8. Charlene Tilton

she's 150cms/4'11 and is a typical babyfaced TR imo. Sexy and cute.

9. Heather Locklear

She's 165cms or 5'5 and is one of the thinner TRs along with Mila Kunis and Morgan Fairchild. nonetheless she looks very much like one to me

10. Beverly D'Angelo

She's 158cms or 5'2 inches

She's tiny, an hourglass, has bedroom eyes and that femme fatale essence.

🦋

what all of these women have in common is their femme fatale essence and their petite hour glass body. if you look at all their pictures, you can tell how they all emanate a very similar vibe. Not every TR is going to be 5 feet tall, some are of average height (including verified TR Selena Gomez who is 5'5)

Although TRs are rare, they're not THAT rare. they walk among us all the time 😌😂 and are easy to spot because they're uncommon enough to stand out from all the other types.

[dailyp1anet]

BREAKING NEWS

SUPERMAN DEAD: NIGHT OF TERROR MORNING OF LOSS

By Lois Lane, Senior Staff Writer

PUBLISHED: 00.00, 14th November 2015 | UPDATED: 11.12, 14th November 2015

TRIBUTE TO SUPERMAN: Not since the death of Kennedy has the nation so collectively mourned. © The Daily Planet: James Olsen, Photographer.

Truth, Justice and the American way. That's what he stood for. It only took his tragic death for people to realise that. Superman has been a subject of controversy ever since his arrival to Metropolis. People died that day and in order for the world to move on, the blame had to be pushed onto someone. Us Metropolitans pushed the fault where it belonged, onto the now deceased General Zod. This is because we witnessed Superman's heroics firsthand. We even erected a monument to remember those lost with him at the centre.

Recently, the world's faith in Superman has wavered. This was due to controversial incident with the overseas gang of terrorists in Nairomi, Africa. An incident now known to be orchestrated by Metropolis Billionaire, Lex Luthor. Luthor preyed on the public's doubt of Superman. He exploited the weaknesses of two of our country's greatest heroes. Both Batman and Superman, Luthor wanted them to come to blows. He also orchestrated the attack on Capitol Hill, killing multiple Senators and civilians, including Senator June Finch. The incident led the world to believe Superman was a conspirator in this attack and caused him to become a recluse, this sealed the public's mistrust in Superman.

Lex also managed to slither his way into the crashed Kryptonian Scout Ship, where he created the creature known as Doomsday. STAR Labs conducted tests on the body and found General Zod's DNA and traces of Luthor's blood. He manipulated two of our country's greatest champions to hate one another. He wanted Superman to kill The Dark Knight to prove to the world he was not the hero the world thought. Luthor also planned my kidnapping from the lobby of The Daily Planet, confessing to me he was behind the attacks after I was brought to the LexCorp Tower. I was pushed off the tower, falling thousands of feet to my death before I was saved by Superman. Just as Luthor expected, I was safely placed on Tilton Avenue before Superman flew to the top of LexCorp to confront Luthor.

Lex must have had major leverage on Superman, because not more than five minutes later, he flew across the bay to Gotham City. Lex assumed it was because Superman was going to murder Batman. But we all know Superman was never a murderer and never would be. Still, it was too late. Batman was harbouring intense anger towards the Man of Steel, believing him to be the cause of the Black Zero Event which claimed over 5,000 lives. Batman had been in the shadows, fighting crime for decades. All that buildup of fury from fighting crime had made him blind to the truth, Luthor had orchestrated his plan perfectly.

A battle between them ensued throughout the abandoned warehouse district of Gotham. I was unaware at the time, my partner Clark Kent was in the epicentre of this battle which also led to the loss of his life. (SEE ARTICLE: DAILY PLANET REPORTER CLARK KENT KILLED REPORTING GOTHAM BATTLE) I arrived at the scene to stop Batman about to murder Superman with a spear forged from Kryptonite, a mineral that is deadly to Kryptonians. I explained that Luthor was behind everything which led to the two heroes joining forces. Angering Luthor that his plan had failed, he unleashed Doomsday, a creature made from General Zod's body and Luthor's DNA. It was released into the city of Metropolis and eventually, Superman, Batman and Wonder Woman led it to Gotham. The United States Military were also scrambling to stop the creature, firing a nuclear missile into space on the orders of the President. Superman was caught in the crossfire but did not perish, neither did Doomsday.

MORE ON THIS DEVELOPING STORY IN TODAY'S EARLY EDITION... REPORTING ON THE PLANET, DAILY.

COMMENTS (12.1M) | LIKES (15.6M) | SHARES (32.2M)

[philippmichelreichold]

on Tasha's Fail-Safe by Adam-Troy Castro

I thoroughly enjoyed Adam-Troy Castro's "Tasha's Fail-Safe." I like Andrea Cort a lot for a lot of reasons. It's always good to read about her. This is a story from early in her career, right after the business with the Zinn. Here is a quote from "Tasha's Fail-Safe" in the March 2015 Analog.--

"She was too good to make that kind of mistake. She'd walked in and out of war zones. She'd taken lives in order to preserve her own. She knew better."

If you thought New London was a safe place to work and play, as I did, you are in for a surprise. If you are sure Andrea is going to take care of business while remaining a very damaged, dragonesque-meets-prickly-pear, anti social bitch, as I was, you will not be surprised or disappointed. I don't agree with Lois Tilton's assessment in Locusmag. I found the story and the anticipatory building of its resolution delicious. Did I mention I like Andrea Cort? Maybe as much as Mr. Castro

References

Adam-Troy Castro's Tasha's Fail-Safe. Philipp Michel Reichold. March 1st, 2015

Analog Science Fiction and Fact, March 2015. ed. Trevor Quachri. "Tasha's Fail-Safe." Adam-Troy Castro.

content is licensed according to Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License. A link to my content is sufficient for attribution.

#sciencefiction#review

[pellicano-sanguino]

Wasted potential in fiction is worse than a story that’s just bad overall.

If someone had asked me couple years ago what vampire books I liked the most, one I would have definitely brought up was Vampire Winter by Lois Tilton. 

It’s a post-nuclear story, where a vampire is at first joyful that the fallout clouds cover the sun both day and night so he is free to hunt whenever he wants but things get worse rather soon. Turns out humans who have been exposed to the radiation have turned undrinkable, poisonous for even vampires. Also, the amount of survivors is small and getting lesser by the day as desperate people leave their shelters to find food and supplies and run from looters, risking radiation poisoning. The vampire who used to kill his victims without mercy is at a situation where he can’t afford to lose a single healthy human to avoid starvation. So he strikes a symbiotic deal with a bunch of humans: since he is unaffected by radiation, he will wander out and bring them food, medicine, even books to pass their time, in exchange for blood donations. This is what I remembered from the book, and thought it good, because I’m a sucker for interesting relationship dynamics between a vampire and their donors.

However, I re-read the book recently and was surprised. It wasn’t nearly as good as I remembered it. The interesting symbiotic relationship between the vampire and his donors only lasts a short period of the book and then they go their separate ways and the vampire for some weird reason just goes back to killing his victims again. Also, there was a lot of completely unnecessary violence towards women. The book tries to have a message of “in hard times it’s better to spare lives and co-operate than divide into groups all against each other” and that “every life is precious” but then goes and has the donors leave behind a mentally handicapped girl for the vampire to kill because she would just be “a burden” for the survivors. Also, there’s a fucking gang rape scene. I’m...   confused...   how did I ever convince myself this was a good book?!

The problem was that my memories were too focused on the one part of the book I found super fascinating. The vampire-donor symbiosis plot was such a great story idea that I actually forgot the rest of the book is shit. I was too intrigued by the story’s potential I failed to notice it doesn’t properly utilize the great idea it had and just turns into a gross masculine violence fantasy.

It’s a shame, because with little changes, this could have been an awesome book. But it completely wasted its potential and left me much more disappointed than would have been the case if it were just a regular old shitty vampire novel with nothing new and interesting added.

I just finished a new book that has the same problem and it infuriates me. It’s a book that has some really great parts but then goes and ruins everything. This book is called Pure Mua (”Bite Me”) by Terhi Tarkiainen. I know, writing about a Finnish book in Tumblr might be useless, since what are the chances Finnish vampire enthusiasts will find my posts, but I want to vent my frustration about it somewhere. So here goes.

Finnish vampire fiction is a rare species. There are some short stories but the only novel I can think of is Jarkko Laine’s Vampyyri, which is a very...   specific Finnish literature category; a “tuskapaskakirja” (literally, pain-shit-book) where everyone is miserable and things just get more and more depressing until the whole garbage reaches a lame anticlimax like a bowl of ice cream I accidentally put in the refrigerator instead of in the freezer. Not my kind of book. So, when I heard the rare species had spawned a new book, Pure Mua, I got curious.

My expectations about the book were mixed. I generally don’t like modern Finnish literature. The few books of it that I had to read back in high school or by getting them as gifts were at best incredibly boring and at worst insufferable pretentious artsy junk. However, this book looked like it aimed to be entertaining, not fake deep and for intellectuals only. It whispered a promise of genuinely embracing its own cheesiness. And, well, I do like cheese.

So I read the book. And my opinions remain conflicting with one another. I can’t really say if I liked it or not because for every part that was done well there was something that seriously rubbed me the wrong way.

The story itself is really well written. The text flows naturally and is pleasant to read, the narration is occasionally very witty and humorous. The plot twists are unpredictable which is unfortunately rare in this genre. Vampire fiction is so full of reused story ideas that they often turn out rather predictable. But this book surprised me several times. Of course, unpredictability shouldn’t be valued by itself. Writers who intentionally lead the reader in one direction only to pull a carpet under their feet or who make their characters behave in unreasonable and inconsistent manner just to get a juicy plot twist, usually don’t produce good quality stories. These plot twists however feel natural and well planned, not there just for the shock value. The plot also escalates constantly, forcing you to read chapter after chapter because you don’t want to leave it at an intense cliffhanger.

Since the vampire fiction is full of reused story ideas, it’s rare that I come across a book that has something I haven’t seen before. The basic premise of this book is that since vampires aren’t classified as humans, human rights don’t apply to them and there’s a ring of illegal slave trade where a “kennel” produces “specimens” for the rich assholes who want to turn their fantasies of dating a hot vampire into reality. Human trafficking basicly, only with vampires. I have not bumped into this story idea before. Usually the power dynamics are reversed, the vampires being the cruel monsters who do horrible things to humans. I know the whole “humans are the real monsters”-trope is old and overused, but surprisingly rarely does it happen in vampire fiction. I guess it’s because to a lot of friends of this genre vampires are a power fantasy and they wouldn’t enjoy seeing them tamed and subjected to something as horrifying as human trafficking.

So, the book turns the traditional vampire/human power dynamics upside down. However, the protagonist actually doesn’t want the pet vampire her nutty parents bought her as a birthday present. She tries to find a way to safely release him back “into the wild” but has trouble coming up with a solution on how to do it and ensure he won’t be recaptured by the trafficking ring again (since he is chipped). 

Next I’m going to spoil the last plot twist of the book. Turns out the trafficking ring is led not by humans but by a loony communist vampire who has a diabolical plan. He intentionally made vampire pets a trend among the filthy rich and then once every elite household in Finland has one, he intends to shut down the safety chips that give the vampires electric shocks if they attack their masters and let the hungry, abused, vengeful vampire slaves drink all the greedy capitalist pigs.

And this is...   supposed to be the main villain of the book. I’m supposed to be appalled and horrified by this impending slaughter of innocent humans. Well. Does it make me a monster if I say I think this is a great plan? Everyone who buys a personal sex toy from a human trafficking ring deserves to be devoured by ravenous vampires. The fact that the victims of slavery aren’t technically human here changes nothing since their intelligence is identical to ours. And creeps who would buy a vampire would definitely buy a woman or a little girl too. 

Everyone who thinks slavery is a fun hobby that the elite should be allowed to do again deserves to be killed by their slave.

The slavery theme is one of the reasons I have such conflicting opinions about this book. It’s such a horrifying scenario and you really, really want to see the main vampire freed from it, you want to see him and the main character succeed in their attempt to destroy the vampire slave trade. But then the book decides to focus less on the horrors of slavery and...    actually romanticize prostitution. The vampires in this book’s universe are all nymphomaniacs and addicted to sex. Umm...   ok, your world, you do what you want. But I really can’t stand the stereotype of seductive, nymphomaniac prostitutes, who do it because they enjoy their “work”, considering how the harsh reality of prostitution is something completely different. “She likes it anyway” is a lie slimy old men tell one another to feel less guilty when they go to Thailand to “play minigolf.” Hurk. Hork. Barf. I know this is fiction and the vampires aren’t human (and we don’t see female vampires) but I really wish people would stop writing this character type. Also, I hate stories where a noble person saves a prostitute and is “rewarded” by their love (in other words, gets to fuck the prostitute anyway, feeding into the idea that “nice guys” who protect women from creeps deserve sex as a reward.)

I give the book one point for the scene where the protagonist starts to caress her slave when she’s super drunk but then is startled and horrified at what she did, thinking that she has become a monster.

If there’s one thing I hate even more than romanticizing prostitution, it’s sexual violence. Thank goodness this story doesn’t have that but it’s bad enough that one male vampire constantly threatens the protagonist with rape. And I’m supposed to care about this guy and worry about what will happen to him. There’s something so disgustingly...   male...   in the thought process that when you want to hurt someone, your first thought is rape. When a woman sees a person they love being abused by someone, she might beat the abuser into a fine pulp but no, women do not rape, women do not use sex as a torture devise. If a guy gets hard from anger and wants to fuck someone he hates there is something seriously wrong with him and he needs to seek help. Men are scum!

This book isn’t a particularly pleasant read for a feminist anyway. With the exception of the protagonist, all female characters are lazily written, unconvincing, misogynistic cardboard cutouts. Male characters on the other hand are, with the exception of the main villain, painted as flawed but sympathetic. The protagonist has a stalker ex who doesn’t understand the concept of “no.” I was convinced this creep would turn out to be a villain in the end, trying to kill the protagonist because “if I can’t have you, no one else can!” Because everything he said and did kept raising the red flags. But no, I’m supposed to find him charming and loveable and his stupid bratboy jokes soooo hilarious. The book wants me to think of all the women except protagonist as either mean-spirited bitches or dumb blondes (your “I’m not like other girls”-complex is showing...) and feel sympathy towards a creepy stalker and a guy who threatens women with rape. Right. Is this some het culture bullshit or just what exactly am I not getting? Also, if your only way to make the heroine likeable is to turn all the other women into cartoonishly evil or ridiculously immature and stupid so that she'll look better in comparison, the reader will become suspicious of her character (because exaggerating the faults in others while claiming you yourself are perfectly innocent is a strategy used by narcisstic, manipulative jerkfaces).

I’m also rather disappointed that the book relies on stereotyping Fenno-Swedes. Fenno-Swedes are the Swedish speaking minority, descendants from rich Swedes that were given land here back when Finland was part of Sweden. Because many of them are still in the upper class, having inherited their ancestors land and wealth, the middle and lower class Finnish speaking Finns tend to be racist towards them, considering them smug elitists and disgustingly rich capitalists who never had to work for their wealth. Making the main character a Fenno-Swede and then giving her behavior that strengthens the prejudice against “bättre folk” is just really lazy writing, it’s like having a romani character and having her do shoplifting. Sure, the protagonist wants to be different than her gross parents who would buy a sex slave as a gift, but her attitude towards money is the same indifference. Oh, I smashed my phone to pieces because the phone call made me angry. Oh well. Pappa betalar. 

There’s a scene where the protagonist and the stalker ex witness a protest that consists simultaneously of racists who want to close the borders and unemployed who blame the government for their poverty (right. You really want to draw “equals as” sign between crazy nationalist bigots and unfortunate people trapped in unemployment hell? Fuck you, fuck you so much.). The protagonist asks where all this hatred comes from and the stalker ex explains that when a person is in a bad situation in life they seek scapegoats to blame for their troubles, whether that be foreigners or politicians. But since we’ve already gone the route of giving the protagonist stereotypical Fenno-Swede behaviour, why not let her voice the opinion of “If the lower class is angry at the upper class it’s because they project unfair blame onto the rich, surely their suffering has nothing to do with the elite’s greed and misuse of power.” Now, opinions like this wouldn’t matter to me normally, because characters are allowed to be flawed, but when those flaws rely on harmful stereotypes, it’s disappointing.

I want to like this book. It’s so genuine and entertaining and well written. But I threw up in my mouth so frequently while reading it that I don’t think I care to read it another time. If it was written a little differently, I would probably love this book. But there’s no use crying after wasted potential. I can’t help but praise the book for the parts that are really good, but I can’t recommend it either. I would have preferred it to be either all good or all shit, not this mixture of gold and rust.

[tediousreviews]

Asimov’s Science Fiction (January 1999)

It's a new Year and a new issue of Asimov's. I'm almost as excited as the woman on the cover. Or are we both horrified?

One novella, two novelettes, and three short stories.

Novella

The Exile of the Evening Star, Allen Steele

The continuing adventures of the guy who was present when the guy who pretended to be Captain Future died. This one involves political intrigue, skullduggery, and entirely too many people getting tossed out of airlocks.

Fun enough though.

Novelettes

The Ice Forest, Richard Wadholm

Any plan that involves destroying reality is not a good plan. You wouldn't think that was a moral that needs to be in quite so many works of science fiction, but then here we are.

Quantum wibbly wobbly, oh hey! I'm not dead in this universe and that means I can get married and have kids and quietly ignore my own corpse.

Dragons Teeth, Lois Tilton

The future sucks, this time with minefields and a refugee underclass on the moon.

Short Stories

Yurek Rutz, Yurek Rutz, Yurek Rutz, David Marusek

Literally just a not-even-veiled excuse to publish the name Yurek Rutz as often as possible.

Original Sin, S. N. Dyer

What if Neanderthals were actually doomed to extinction because our ancestors thought they were just so damn tasty? Well, it probably wouldn't have any effect on the doomed marriage of a pair of archaeologists.

The Pragmatical Princess, Nisi Shawl

If you're ever a princess who's being sacrificed to a dragon, you should maybe consider getting it to fake its conversion to Islam. 

Final Thoughts

I should probably be putting in more effort to capitalize on the little bump in attention all my sub-blogs have been getting for the past few weeks. I don't know whether people are just bored now that the porn is... well obviously not actually gone from tumblr... or it's just the usual school's out bump.

Screw self promotion though, I'm tired, I'm sick, and I have no intention of treating my hobbies like work in the first place.

Also the issue was fine I guess.

[forthegothicheroine]

February 2022 Reading Report

Read:

Nobody’s Perfect: Writings from the New Yorker by Anthony Lane

The Many Faces of Van Helsing (anthology)

Certain Dark Things by Silvia Moreno-Garcia

Gwen, in Green by Hugh Zachary

Princess Pamela by Ray Russell

Sea Star by Pamela Jekel (DNF)

Snow, Glass, Apples by Neil Gaiman and Colleen Doran

The Suspicions of Mr. Whicher by Kate Summerscale

Taiping Tales of Terror by Julya Oui

Welcome to Hard Times by E. L. Doctorow

The Cat Who Saved Books by Sosuke Natsukawa

Where the Drowned Girls Go by Seanan McGuire

Goth: Undead Subculture (essay anthology) (DNF)

Still Reading:

Poe: 19 New Tales of Suspense, Dark Fantasy and Horror Inspired by Edgar Allan Poe (anthology)

Does this month have a theme? Let’s call it Deadly Women. Most of these books have some kind of femme fatale or dark heroine in them. Femme Fatale February!

I finished Nobody’s Perfect, of which I’d previously read many reviews and essays but never the whole thing straight through. I love Anthony Lane so much. He’s arch and witty and perceptive, and though he’s known for his caustic reviews (of which Indecent Proposal was my favorite), he has the ability to be bitingly funny when he loves a movie, too (of which his Speed review was my favorite.) His essays enlightened me as to how Nabokov constructed sentences and how high fashion brands really make their money (perfume and accessories.) His short reviews of the bestseller lists in the 90s and 40s may be my favorite of all the essays in book, where he tackles everyone from Ayn Rand to Sue Grafton. His writing is a very good example of how intelligent criticism can be.

I’ve been meaning to read The Many Faces of Van Helsing for a while now, and I finally did! None of the stories blew me away, but there were a few good ones (my favorite being The Infestation at Ralls by Thomas Tessier, a slightly gross story about Van Helsing dealing with an incubus with some great characterization for our favorite doctor.) On the whole I didn’t care for the stories where Van Helsing was evil, but at least My Dear Madame Mina by Lois Tilton gave a believable reason in his obsessive love for poor Mina Harker. With all the stories about his wife ending up in an asylum, I was grateful that in Kim Newman’s Diogenes Club continuity she ended up okay!

Silvia Moreno-Garcia has said she makes it a point to vary up her book subjects and styles, and Certain Dark Things is a fun urban fantasy about vampires in a futuristic Mexico City. I’ve grown bored with a lot of urban fantasy conventions in the last several years, but this one captured me by keeping its vampiric antiheroine mysterious for a good portion of the book and inventing some genuinely creative vampire biology. This would be a good book for people who like spooky monsters and hardboiled crime but aren’t big horror fans- it’s tense without being very gory. And the introduction gave me a bunch of classic Mexican vampire movies I now have to see!

Gwen, in Green was described in Paperbacks from Hell as one of the strangest and most unusual books Grady Hendrix had ever read, and I can certainly see why! It’s the story of a housewife’s descent into a combination of madness and possession as she drifts away from her clueless husband and towards the lure of nature- especially whatever’s in the pond near her new home. It’s partly erotic horror, partly nature’s revenge on developers and polluters, and partly a tale of sexual politics that I’m still trying to untangle. (Misogynist? Misandrist? Both? Neither?) I picked it partly as my Novella choice for the Books in the Freezer challenge, and as it is in fact short and zippy, you may as well check it out if the description I gave interests you.

Ray Russell is a beloved short story author of mine (author of the brilliant novella Sardonicus, and screenwriter of the goofy movie adaptation) so I was very excited to find out he’d written a full length Victorian gothic novel, Princess Pamela! It turned out to be tongue in cheek but also genuinely depraved (more modern gothics need to be genuinely depraved!) There’s some bodice ripping and political murder, and it moves into alternate history in the latter third, which was an exciting surprise. My only real disappointment was the copout ending, but it didn’t completely spoil the fun.

I was excited to read Sea Star, which was supposed to be a bodice ripper about Anne Bonny, and had a wonderful cover! Sadly, the backstory they gave her kind of ruined it for me. Sure, we don’t know a lot about Anne Bonny so I guess she could have been a southern belle with slaves, but did they really have to choose that backstory? I guess it’s a fantasy, like Elizabeth Swan starting out as a fine lady in fancy clothes, but it’s a distinctly unpleasant fantasy. (Am I a hypocrite for being happy about piracy but unhappy about plantations? I don’t know?) Once I saw how long it would take for her to actually get to pirating, I decided it wasn’t worth the wait; a shame, because she had sex with Hornigold and I wanted to see have many other Black Sails characters she would sleep with.

I’d already read the short story Snow Glass Apples (and heard an audio play adaptation!) but the graphic novel version was absolutely worth the read for its stunning artwork. It reminded me of some of the gorgeous illustrated fairy tale books I had as a kid, though they did say in the section with sketches that they tried not to make the art too kid-friendly for fear of giving the wrong impression. If you haven’t read the story already you absolutely should, and this is a perfectly good way to read it. Do you like Snow White and witchcraft and vampires? Of course you do.

The Suspicions of Mr. Whicher was a bit of a let-down, though it isn’t exactly bad or anything. It’s an historical true crime book about the murder of young Francis Saville Kent by- maybe- his sister Constance, the detective who first took on the case, and how it influenced contemporary detective and sensation fiction like The Moonstone and The Woman in White. I understand that author Kate  Summerscale wanted to stick purely to the facts, but the Road Hill House case is so strange and interesting that I wanted something much more in depth. Did Constance commit the murder or was she covering for someone with her sudden, strangely-worded confession? Couldn’t Summerscale have at least discussed the question, even if she didn’t want to make her own conclusion? Someone on goodreads said it read more like a thesis paper than a book, and I can see that.

Taiping Tales of Terror is a decent collection of local monster and ghost stories, with a look at small town Malaysian culture, which I knew very little about. I chose it as the Monsters entry in the Books in the Freezer challenge, though it could also fill the Translated entry- maybe I should rework my potential list? It reads a bit more like a YA book than adult horror, but the lines between YA and adult are plenty blurry as it is. I was fascinated to see hw many different cultures have variations on the ‘dismembered woman’s head dragging its entrails’ monster; maybe, as with vampires, it ties back to the way bodies decompose? The ending twist was a good one, well-suited to campfire stories.

I haven't read many western novels, despite having watched plenty of western movies, and it was good to get to one of the classics with Welcome to Hard Times. The title gives a good indication of the central theme- it’s not completely Deadwood-style lurid crime, but it’s a story of the trauma that comes after an outlaw attack, and the efforts to rebuild a town, and the question of whether it will protect the citizens in the future or all be for nothing. Jack Torrence is mentioned reading it in the book version of The Shining, and I imagine it was chosen thematically because it features the disintegration of a family into madness and violence.

The Cat Who Saved Books is a Japanese YA novel that’s definitely on the more unambiguous kid side of YA, a fantasy of metaphorical lessons translated into concrete characters and places ala The Phantom Tollbooth. I would have liked it a lot more as a child, but I still appreciated it. I would certainly follow a mysterious cat that asked me to help save books! Reading it right before Where the Drowned Girls Go was appropriate, as I could imagine it being one of those ‘child goes through a magic door’ settings. (Also, if any Japanese readers can tell me whether it was realistic/legal for an underage kid to just live and work at a bookstore on his own with his aunt sometimes checking up on him, please let me know!)

As mentioned already, my next book was Where the Drowned Girls Go! This entry in the Wayward Children series, about what happens to children who return from portal fantasy adventures, was much darker and more horror-focused, placing its characters in a dystopian school that’s meant to make them forget they ever encountered magic. I was a little disappointed that the school was so purely evil, as I had thought it would be nice to have a counterbalance to the main school where the kids want nothing more than to go back to their fantasy worlds, but that wasn’t where the plot wanted to go. It was still enjoyable, and at least we did meet kids who had good reasons for not wanting to return, and there was at last sympathy for parents who had no idea where their kids went when they fucked off to fairyland. The cliffhanger ending definitely worked in getting me hyped up for the next entry!

Goth: Undead Subculture was the book unread on my shelf for the longest time, and now I feel a bit guilty that I ended up putting it aside. It was a lot more academic than I’d expected, which is not normally a problem for me to read, but it turned into a slog and I finally decided not to force myself to finish something I wasn’t enjoying. I did like the points it made about goth (and subcultures in general) existing in this weird liminal area where it’s partly rebelling against mainstream conformity but also creating its own things to conform to and buy. I’ll keep it around in case I want to try again, or at least try specific essays.

I’m trying to catch up on a bunch of Ellen Datlow’s fantasy and horror anthologies, and  Poe: 19 New Tales of Suspense, Dark Fantasy and Horror Inspired by Edgar Allan Poe is a good one so far! I loved Kim Newman’s take on the Corman/Poe/Price movies starting a literal curse where they can only remake Usher over and over again, though the next story about creepy homeless people was less to my taste. The introduction mentioned the rule that none of these stories could be pastiches, which I think is for the best. Let’s see if anyone does a take on Hop-Frog, my favorite Poe story!

[tatteredsmiles]

𝟗 𝐏𝐞𝐨𝐩𝐥𝐞 𝐓𝐚𝐠 𝐆𝐚𝐦𝐞 — answer these & tag 9 people you’d like to know better /catch up with!

last song: “reign” Ramin Djawadi - GoT ost

currently reading: written in venom - Lois Tilton

currently watching: some YouTube review

last movie: legend (1985 movie)

craving: oyakodon

Tagged by: @vampirecrack

Tagging: @avalthollr @maidenxfthemxuntains @thescaledqueen @vindictiveolympianqueen @jcyfulmess @sapphirexjewelxwitch @thatslayer @sicilianrcse @sigrvif

[vtgbooks]

Lois Tilton Accusations Babylon 5 BOOK 2 1995 Vtg Babylon 5 Tv Show Vtg Sci Fi

[teerlinck]

Weekend At Byron’s And Other Tales Of The Wandering Shade

“Egregiously ridiculous” --Lois Tilton, LOCUS Magazine

[danbensen]

Stephen Hunt at Inklings Press was kind enough to ask me some questions about the Sidewise Awards (coming tomorrow) and my feelings about the nomination of one of my short stories.

Stephen: So – it’s been a year since Tales From Alternate Earths came out, and you’re up for a Sidewise Award, the biggest award in the alt history field and up against the likes of Bruce Sterling. How do you feel about the nomination?

Dan: I'm not worried – I'm closing in on Bruce Sterling! Living in the Balkans: check. Tumblr account: check ( @brucesterling ). Getting nominated for a prestigious alternate history award: check! It's only a matter of time, čoveče.

S: The Sidewise Award has a heady list of previous winners – including people such as Stephen Baxter, Walter Jon Williams, Lois Tilton, Gardner Dozois, Ken Liu… who are the great writers of alternative history who you admire and would say are influential?

D: Harry Turtledove and S. M. Stirling are probably my biggest alternate history influences, since I read them both extensively in high school, and learned how playing with history could make a good story. I admire the real diggers into alternate history, people like Bruce Munro, Den Valdron, and Jared, whose rigorous approach to their avocation creates worlds that deserve to be real. As story-telling, goes, though, Ted Chiang is everything I aspire to be. I've got a long ways to go.

S: What’s next for you, win or lose?

D: My story for the next Tales from Alternate Earths anthology is ready, about al-Andalus gliders.Then I have to finish my next novel, in which a cross-time rail system allows a 1930s private investigator to rescue her baby older brother from a high-tech child-smuggling ring. It's got maser-wielding gangsters and a party on a blimp! In the mean time, my alien politics murder mystery and, uh, my other alien politics murder mystery are both looking for publishers.

S: Where will you be when the winners are announced?

D: I'll be in the Church of Saint Michael the Archangel in Sofia, Bulgaria, performing my sacred duties as the godfather of the children of my best man and maid of honor.* I'll try to keep my hands off my cell phone.

S: Okay, we’ll see how the final comes out. But in the meantime – Tales From Alternate Earths aside – if you were to name one alternate history book for readers to try out, which would it be? Just one. Yes, I’m being tough.

D: That is tough, but there is one alternate history novel that stands out: Pastwatch: The Redemption of Christopher Columbus by Orson Scott Card. I know it isn't "pure" alternate history (since it involves travel from the future of our timeline), but it is a good story populated by sympathetic characters, and it includes all the blue-sky guesstimating that makes alternate history so much fun. What if this had happened? Well then what if that followed? Next thing you know, you're knee-deep in crystal skulls.

Thank you very much and keep your fingers crossed for me. With enough human wills yoked to mine, I'll have the power to tunnel into the universe in which I win that award!

*The translation isn't perfect. Go look up "kum i kuma."

[sherrydramsey]

Author Interview – Thea Hutcheson (Eclectica Bundle) http://bit.ly/2GnJ6qs

Welcome back, everyone! Today I’m welcoming Thea Hutcheson, one of the authors from BundleRabbit’s Eclectica Bundle, to the blog for a chat.

Sherry: Hi, Thea, and welcome! To start, please tell us a little about the story/book you have in Eclectica.

Thea: When Megan moves into her new house, things begin to disappear. Weird things like socks, and decorative pins, and a cheap class ring. Things she just saw recently and don’t have a lot of value, but she misses them all the same. She can’t decide whether to blame it on her cheating ex or a klepto ghost. When her best friend sends a geeky ghost hunter her way, Megan finds a new chance for romance and something she never expected in her wildest dreams.

Sherry: That sounds like a lot of fun (and I love that cover)! What’s your current writing project? How do you feel about it right this minute?

Thea: My current WiP is a lesbian urban fairy tale. I love fairy tales. I love to play with them. This one is the second in a series. It is based on the Crystal Orb, the story of a young man, part of triplets whose mother went mad and thought they were trying to steal her power. She had banished two of them and the third got away. He goes on an adventure, meets, giants, acquires a magic hat that takes him anywhere he wants and meets an enchanted princess.

In my story the boy who gets away is a teenage girl and she spends the next thirteen years trying to find a spell to cure her mother’s madness and break the banishing spell that keeps her from her brothers. There’s magic and love and more magic in it.

Sherry: Do you remember what sparked the idea for your story/book in this bundle? What was it?

Thea: I wrote a story a long time ago as an answer to a fellow writer’s claim that no one could make a story about laundry interesting. I flipped the idea and flapped silly thing about, and it became “Fishing”, a story postulating one idea about what happens to the socks in the laundry. It was also my very first professional SF sale. Jim Baen’s Universe published it and then included it in the first Best of Jim Baen’s Universe.

So, I thought it was time to flip that story again and look at it from the other side and came up with “Sock and Pins and Aliens”.

I will have you know, I never lose socks in the laundry anymore as I use these super fancy clips to keep them together. Except that there was this one pair I really like, lacy and slinky, that I never did find after I put them in the washing machine.

Sherry: I also love writing stories in answer to a challenge. :)  And I’m always fascinated by where we get our ideas. Do you remember what sparked the idea for another of your stories?

Thea: Oliver Sacks was a great neurologist and a super cool dude. He wrote a ton of books that, among other things, were full of fascinating anecdotes about people with brain diseases and injuries. He was a wonderful speaker and a frequent guest on Science Friday on NPR. One time, right before he died of cancer (I think or at least they aired it before he died), he told this marvelous story about tripping on acid when he was younger. He was sitting on the floor of his apartment facing a blank wall. “Show me indigo,” he commanded his tripping self. And it appeared on the wall.

After that episode, I wondered what it would be like to have that blob of indigo show up and then walk through it. Where would it lead? That became the kernel of “Seeing Indigo”. I always call it my homage to Oliver Sacks story, even though the only part that relates is the color indigo. But I loved him and I like to think he would have approved.

Sherry: What’s the most perfect short story you’ve ever read?

Thea: There was this story by Kit Reed. I looked for it online, but couldn’t find the collection it was in. It was a perfect set up story. She always had such a wicked sense of humor and timing. I think it was called The Nest. I loved her work. Also, anything by Robert Sheckley. He is wickedly sharp. I wish I could do wicked sharp. Or “At the Rialto” by Connie Willis. I adore her sense of humor and I love to talk politics with her. She is just about the most well-read human I know.

Sherry: I adore Connie Willis!  I wish I could write with the fun and complexity of her humorous stories, and the depth of character of tales like Blackout and All Clear.

So speaking of interactions with other writers, do you belong to any writer’s groups or communities? Do you think these types of social interactions are important for writers?

Thea: I belong to Rocky Mountain Fiction Writers and a couple of critique groups. I have a lot of writer friends. I think they are critical. Look, we spend hours in a room by ourselves, making shit up. Our writer friends can help us improve that shit and understand what we go through to get to that golden shit. Plus, they understand, or at least overlook, those weird little foibles we have.

Sherry: Agreed! I treasure my writer friends. Looking back even further, do you think there were early influences as a reader that have guided the stories you create as a writer? What were they?

Thea: Oh, Andre Norton for sure. I loved her books. The librarians would hold them for me and give me a new stack when I came each week. I collected them for a long time. Mary Stewart was another. I loved her books. Danny Dunn books too. I never cared that he was a boy. I took the message that I could do all that stuff myself and so my characters do, too.

Sherry: Do you prefer music, silence, or some other noise in the background when you write? If music, what kind?

Thea: Music. I love music, especially love songs when I work. I am especially into Yacht Rock on Amazon Music right now. Great station. Blast from the past and all that.

Sherry: I’m always interested in other writers’ workspaces, too. Do you keep a tidy desk/workspace, or a messy one? Do you think one or the other helps your creativity?

Thea: I have a sign in my office that says, “Tidy people don’t make the kinds of discoveries I do.” I think that says it well.

Sherry: I know what you mean. When I tidy up, I take a picture so I can remember what it looked like. ;) Apart from keeping a messy desk, do you have any writing “rituals”? What are they (if you’re willing to share)?

Thea: I use The War of Art by Steven Pressfield like an AA Big Book, opening it at random now to get a reminder of how creative people combat Resistance.

Sherry: Great idea! So one more question: many writers also put their creativity to use in ways other than writing. Do you consider yourself a “creative person?” What other creative outlets do you have?

Thea: I am creative. I love to fool around with recycled materials. I make petroglyphs from rocks that I get on road trips. My boyfriend is so well trained that he just pulls over now when there are interesting rocks on the side of the road. I often grind up the rocks and mix them with glue and use them to fill in the lines in the petroglyphs. Beautiful stuff, even if I do say so myself.

Sherry: Thea, thanks so much for stopping by to chat; this was fun.

Thea Hutcheson explores far away lands full of magic and science with one hand holding hope and the other full of wonder.  Lois Tilton of Locus called her work “sensual, fertile, with seed quickening on every page. Well done…” Her work has appeared in such places as Hot Blood XI, Fatal Attractions, M-Brane Issue 12, Baen’s Universe Issue 4, Vol. 1, the Beauty and the Beast Issue of The Enchanted Conversation, Realms of Fantasy’s 100th issue, and Fiction River’s Recycled Pulp anthology.  September 2016 will see her latest story, “Hoarding” appear in Fiction River’s Haunted anthology. She lives in an economically depressed, unscenic, nearly historic small city in Colorado with four semi-feral cats, 1000 books, and an understanding partner.  She’s a factotum when she’s filling the time between bouts at the computer. You can find Thea online at her website, theahutcheson.com on Twitter, and on Facebook.

[hellsings-cujo-blog]

I have an interest in understanding evil. Who is the bad guy - the vampire who kills people and sucks their blood, or the survivalists who kill people to save their own lives? Is evil merely a creation of people? Or is there an evil nature? Or is it in the eye of the beholder? I really like these question

Lois Tilton

[philippmichelreichold]

on Willing Flesh by Jay O’Connell

Willing Flesh by Jay O’Connell is a tale about the battle of the bulge and going to (almost) any length to win it.

I relate to the struggle of Garrison to gain control of diet and exercise. In twelve step addictions recovery, the participants speak of a willingness to go to any length to free themselves. And so it is with Garrison. Garrison hates to exercise. He hates to diet. He hates his morbid obesity even more. The attraction of the weight loss/diet/exercise program Garrison turns to is that he doesn't have to experience any of the hardships of the program while reaping the rewards. Sounds great to me! But Garrison's life spins out of his control as the program takes over. Results are astounding and miraculous, but at the cost of who Garrison was. In the real world, all of us suffering from morbid obesity must lose ourselves to save ourselves. So it is with Garrison. He struggles to regain control of the new Garrison. End the end, the author sends a deus ex machina to resolve Garrison's struggle. As Lois Tilton says, "the author is pretty kind to Garrison". A fun story to think about as I struggle to save/lose myself.

Refernces

Willing Flesh by Jay O’Connell. Philipp Michel Reichold.

Asimov's Science Fiction. April-May 2015. "Willing Flesh." Jay O’Connell.

All of my article content should be regarded as attribution required. A link to my content is sufficient.

[pellicano-sanguino]

I know I missed Halloween as an excuse to post something vampire related. But whatever, I have a horrible flu and have been on sick leave, so I have time to write a bit. Let’s talk about vampires.

Actually, this time I’d like to give spotlight to characters that are an important part of vampire fiction but, in my opinion, don’t seem to get the love and respect they need - the donors.

First, terminology. As far as I know, there isn’t any officially accepted terms to use for fictional people whose blood the vampires drink. To tell the different types apart, I’ve usually been using the following.

Victim: When the vampire’s feeding is fatal or they use force/violence to get blood from an unwilling human.

Host: When the vampire steals blood from an unknowing (and therefore still non-consenting) human, such as sucking blood from people who are asleep or under hypnosis. Feeding is not fatal.

Donor: A human who 100% willingly volunteers to let a vampire drink their blood.

Ever since vampire fiction took a turn away from being seen as purely horror, the romantic possibilities of stories involving vampires have given us more donor characters. Which I am very happy about, since out of the three types, the donor is the most fascinating. All animals hate parasites and humans are no different. It’s always interesting to see what can make a person overcome this very basic instinct to hate and/or fear parasitic creatures. 

Back when I wrote vampire stories of my own, I would often name the donors Charity, so much so that instead of calling this character type “donors” I referred to them as “Lady Charitys.” I thought, that giving something out of your own body, your own living blood cells, was the ultimate form of charity. I still have a lot of fondness for donor characters who give blood out of sympathy for the vampire. The Self-Wounding Pelican that I named my Tumblr account after is a symbol of this ultimate charity.

Because I have such a high opinion of donors as noble and altruistic folks, I am disappointed when vampires in fiction look down upon them or call them ugly names, like how in True Blood the humans who go to vampire clubs to offer their blood are called Fang Bangers. I know it’s because some of these humans do it because they have a fetish for it, but even so, they are giving you their blood, a portion of a living liquid organ that they themselves also need to live, expecting nothing in exchange and you speak of them like they’re prostitutes. Not cool.

Pure altruism isn’t the only reason for a person to become a donor. I’ve often seen one time donations done out of desperation between a human and their vampire ally when they are against a common enemy and the vampire only stands a chance to fight if they’ve had some blood. 

One type that I’ve rarely seen but is rather interesting is blood being used for bartering. Human wants something from the vampire and rewards them with some blood. The only example that comes to my mind is Vampire Winter by Lois Tilton, a post-nuclear story in which a group of humans are stuck inside a shelter and make a symbiotic deal with a vampire who is unaffected by the radiation and so can go out and fetch food and supplies for the humans. Interesting scenario but unfortunately the book isn’t very good besides this part.

When I was younger, and couldn’t order any book I wanted from the internet, I was limited to books that I could find at the stores and at the library. The book store had one small shelf that had cheap English language paperback romances with supernatural themes. Great literature these were not, but I bought several to satiate my hunger for vampire stories. They introduced to me the concept of romantic donation. That you don’t donate blood because of charity, battle tactic or in exchange for something, but because you love the vampire and blood drinking is just one form of intimacy, in a “I am all yours, my heart, my body and my blood” sort of thing.

I am a sucker for a good, sappy romance, but I’m sure I have already whined a million times about how much I hate the trope of combining blood drinking with sex. As a concept, I don’t think it’s bad. Done well it might work. But pretty much every time the human/vampire pair decide to have sex while the blood drinking happens, blood just becomes meaningless addition. It’s like the author wanted to write a smutty scene and describes the sex in Great Detail but then almost forgot to put any blood drinking in their vampire story and hastily slapped a short description of it in the middle of the sex. Blood drinking can definitely be intimate and sensual, but way too many writers are more interested in writing the sex.

I think I should write a little about some of my favourite donors and why I like them. So, here goes.

Youko from Hana wa Tenbin to Asobu

David Attemborough voice: “...and here we see the rare species...  the schoolgirl vampire...   as after a long awaited feeding...   she angsts about her donor...”

In this manga vampirism is a medical condition, that requires a person to drink blood or suffer failing health. It also happens to be a gender-bending story, because people with the vampire condition are born as neither male or female and will turn into one when they reach maturity and their sex will be determined by whether they drank more female or male blood. Why, Japan. Why. And what will happen if a person drinks 50/50 both types? Will they become the Androgyne of the Alchemists?

Something like this?

Well, to be fair, the manga handles the whole fantasy sex change gimmick relatively well (=doesn’t turn it into a tasteless comedy). It’s a relaxing “girl transfers into a new school and befriends people” kind of story. The new student, Youko, soon discovers the secret of the vampire character, Shuu. After becoming aware of her new friend’s condition, she immediately offers to become her donor. In a rather pushy manner.

I admit, I usually dislike the “extrovert bugs an introvert until the latter accepts their friendship” trope, because a lot of them feature very obnoxious and rude extroverts that cross boundaries and are complete emotional fuckwits and I’m just supposed to handwave their behaviour because aww look at them smiling so cutely and wanting to be your frieeeeend. Youko is definitely an extrovert and Shuu is an introvert, who takes some time to grow to be genuinely fond of Youko. But somehow they make the “extrovert pushing friendship to an introvert” thing work. I don’t know, Youko is just...   not obnoxious or socially clueless. Behind her sunny personality, you can tell that whenever she follows Shuu around and pushes into her company, it’s because she is concerned for Shuu’s health. And she knows when it’s ok to cross certain borders. Like when Shuu locks herself in her room out of stress and anxiety, Youko climbs in through the window. Which is a lovely reversal of a vampire entering a sleeping victim’s room via window.

So, what are the blood drinking scenes like? They usually go like this: Shuu begins to feel unwell. Youko metaphorically slaps her with a metaphorical rolled up newspaper and is all “Shuu, for fuck’s sake!” (but more politely). And then Shuu's like what am I going to do with you (or should I ask, what are you going to do with me?) but drinks some blood anyway (and likes it). Youko bandages her wound while Shuu angsts.

I love the blood drinking scenes between these two because I like both characters. Because Shuu isn’t a supernatural creature, just a human who needs to consume blood to stay healthy, there is no power imbalance between them. The blood drinking scenes are very realistic and earthly. Though there are some scenes where Shuu drinks blood from the neck, usually an arm is the chosen spot and that is much more realistic (also, I like how it makes the vampire bow down like a knight kneeling in front of her lady). Shuu bowing down to drink Youko’s blood shows the natural power balance of a vampire-donor relationship: during a donation, the donor must be in complete control of it. And donors need the respect they deserve.

Because of the magical sex change nonsense, one of the story’s conflicts is that Shuu is developing feelings for Youko but if she keeps drinking Youko’s blood she’ll end up becoming a woman and so has smaller chance of the feelings being mutual since the majority of women are into males. The series ends before we get to see them confess or anything, but I was happy that Shuu came to the conclusion that she wouldn’t try to become a man for Youko.  She's like, screw it, I like Youko and I like her blood and I'm not giving up either. If that turns me into a lesbian, so be it. It’s not just my wish to get a lesbian romance instead of a het one, I think it would have been disappointing if Shuu had rejected Youko’s help as a donor just because Youko is female and she’s trying to become a man. I do understand why Shuu hesitated, though. In a heteronormative world a woman who is only romantically interested in women has a small dating pool and I can’t blame Shuu for at least considering using her chance to do something about it. 

Kei from Akaiito (アカイイト)

I was once invited to a vampire themed party and I went dressed up as Kei, my favourite donor. I was the only donor in a sea of vampires and vampire hunters. Unfortunately I have no pics of my costume.

Akaiito is a visual novel that doesn’t actually have vampires, but it takes place in a universe where all supernatural creatures can increase their magical powers by drinking blood, so for me it’s close enough. The main character, Kei, belongs to a bloodline that was the result of breeding humans like cattle to produce the highest quality blood in the world, to be offered as sacrifices to gods. End goal of the game is: monsters and evil gods are after you, do not die, ally yourself with a side character of your choice and have some vaguely yuri-ish scenes with that person. 

Superficially Kei doesn’t seem like that interesting of a character. She’s a very basic insert-self-here generic heroine. A lot of people might find her frustrating to play as, since she is pretty helpless against the monsters thirsting after her blood, having no combat training or magic skills herself. I get it, she may seem like an old fashioned damsel in distress who needs the help of others to survive. But as much as I like badass female warriors who can defend themselves, I think sometimes it’s interesting to consider a situation where a person is made seemingly helpless and they need to find other ways than their own power to survive. Kei has no weapons or magic. But she has a blood meter.

The blood meter is more than just a life bar. There are several points in the game where the visual novel gives you the opportunity to have Kei donate blood to a friendly monster or goddess who are her allies against the main villain. You need to be careful how much you give, because the blood meter is also your life bar - lose too much and you get a bad ending (the game isn’t particularly spooky despite its supernatural elements, but the bad ends where Kei describes dying in first perspective are kinda unsettling). By powering up her allies Kei can increase her chances of surviving. Some good endings require you to give blood generously, because if you don’t, your allies won’t be strong enough to defeat the big bad. Or they are strong enough but use up so much power in the fight that after victory they crumble to dust in your arms.

The reason Kei is one of my favourite donors is that her blood and the donating process are made into such an integral part of the story. Unfortunately, a lot of vampire stories don’t really give blood any meaning as a plot element. Also there are a lot of lazily written blood drinking scenes, where it just sort of happens and there’s little attention given to what the donating means to the donor and the vampire, what they think and feel about it, what kind of things led to them into the blood drinking scene. A lot of the time blood drinking just sort of happens, unceremoniously. 

That is not the case in Akaiito. The scenes that lead up to the blood drinking scenes are as interesting as the scene itself. Kei narrates her thoughts and feelings to the player constantly. If you decide to make an ally drink Kei’s blood, we see Kei first come to the conclusion that this is an act she wants to take, she explains to herself why she thinks it needs to be done and she then proposes the idea to the ally and they discuss the subject before agreeing upon it. It’s kind of sad that I have to be this excited about characters just talking about blood drinking, but as I said, a lot of the the blood drinking just sort of happens with little details given about the characters thoughts and feelings. 

I want to describe one blood drinking scene in particular, since it’s one of the most memorable blood drinking scenes I’ve ever read. Being chased by what she fears to be a hostile monster, Kei runs madly through thick woods and not seeing where she’s dashing, ends up falling off a cliff. Before she reaches the bottom of the cliff, Yumei, a local guardian deity materializes and tries to slow her descent. But Yumei is a rather young and weak goddess, appearing in daylight takes an enormous amount of her divine powers and she’s unable to stop Kei from falling, though she does soften her landing slightly. 

So Kei falls. Tragically. The screen goes red and you hear the sound effect of Kei’s body slamming to the ground. Her vision gone, Kei coughs blood from her crushed insides and panics when she can’t see Yumei anymore. Yumei speaks to her to calm her down, telling her that she’ll try her best at healing her. Despite her agonizing pain, Kei comes to the conclusion that as she is now, Yumei won’t be able to save her and will perish under sunlight. So she advises Yumei to drink her blood because otherwise they will both die. The situation being as dire as it is, Yumei doesn’t hesitate and follows Kei’s advise immediately.

The tension in this scene comes from the characters. Kei and Yumei are very close and that emotional bond makes this scene both touching and absolutely horrifying. The story is told from Kei’s point of view, so I can only imagine how Yumei felt. First to realize that she won’t be able to save the person who is closest to her heart. And then to hear that suggestion, which she has to rationalize as the only option they have to come out of this alive. How does she feel, stopping her healing efforts and leaving mortally wounded Kei waiting while she kneels down on all four like some wild animal and laps the blood from the dirty ground. The blood that Kei just spat out from her crushed insides. Spat out! From her crushed insides! This is the most painful blood drinking scene I have ever read and it’s not even a violent one, it’s between two characters who love each other and it’s consensual but damn is it painful because it hits me right in the feelings.

Kei coming to the solution on how to survive her accident is the kind of writing that I love in Akaiito. The blood drinking scenes have emotion and rationality behind them and they move the plot in some direction instead of being there just because the makers of the visual novel wanted something to work as a substitute for sensual scenes (which I hear some people say they are). For Kei, her blood is a big deal. She has a limited blood meter and what she does with it can save her or kill her and everyone she loves. The Blood of Sacrifice is definitely powerful.

I don’t really have a good conclusion about donors and I see I ended up writing more about the donation as a scene than donors as persons. Oh well. I am feverish and rambling. I will say this bottom line: In order to be well written, a blood drinking scene needs to be either beautiful or interesting, preferably both. Let the characters talk about it even out of the actual scene. Make it meaningful for the plot. Bird of Charity has spoken. Now to get more ibuprofen.

[blue-mint-winter]

He let her take the time to pull herself back together, wondering why it was somehow all right for women to cry— - or maybe why men had to find it so hard. There’d been enough times in the last few years when he’d wanted to cry, when he’d even almost wished there was someone to hold him like that while he did it. And maybe that was the worst part— - there wasn’t, and he was starting to think maybe there wouldn’t ever be anyone like that in his life again.

Michael Garibaldi in Accusations by Lois Tilton