#mwuhaha it begins

[kaelmcdonald]

John is a fucking masterclass on writing subtle villainy. He is the literal opposite of the hand-wringing, mwuhahaing mastermind - a guy who just fucking sucks. He makes entirely reasonable and understandable choices, and he makes them from the worst parts of himself. He's not a deliberately terrible person. He has every capacity to justify his decisions while also being smart enough to know deep down that those decisions were shit. He's just Some Guy who was dealt a bad hand and proceeded to play it the worst way possible. He can't let go of formative hurts. His own part in past mistakes were just tough decisions, while others' parts in it were unforgivable transgressions. He's been alive too long and squanders his time. He's so lonely. He doesn't know how to interact with people. He hangs on to in-jokes that nobody gets anymore. He hates himself. He needs other people to love himself for him. He is literally worshipped, and the useless hit of serotonin he gets from it pales in comparison to actual human connection, but it's all he feels he deserves and so he milks it by using his once-bland-but-now-esoteric references to seem mysterious. He just fucking SUCKS, actually, and can't bring himself to do anything about the ways he sucks. And this is all so benign, so banal, so painfully common that even knowing all these things about him wouldn't make you hate him - hell for the most part anybody would still get along great with him, because most of us are that way by degrees. He's not unrelatable. Especially to his fellow immortals, who understandably still like him, while knowing he has done some horrible things. Those that remain still love him, and largely just want him to get his shit together and start healing. But this random dude got turned into God, and he realized with horror and shame that nothing about him was very god-like at all. Even after everything, a myriad later, all he really has to do is acknowledge that he fucked up, just own up to sucking at all this and beginning the work to change his attitudes. And he can't. He won't. The sunk cost fallacy in this manchild has gone on longer than any of us can even conceive of, and for that a perfectly fine, forgettable person has become an evil, capricious deity.

These books make me absolutely insane.

I think often about the heavy irony of John laughing at Wake's name and mocking BOE's naming systems. BOE are trying to preserve lost Earth culture, but clueless of context, their fragmented merging of high and low culture comes across as silly to John (and us. But it's a noble attempt to preserve everything, even the stuff that wouldn't necessarily seem 'worth' saving. But what does John rename his friends? Pyrrha and Cassiopeia and Ulysses and Augustine. He also names almost everything after Earth culture, but it's literary/religious/historical 'high' culture. BOE is scrabbling to save everything possible, but John has the privilege of context and memory, and so he picks and chooses what's 'worthy' of being used or shared. Low culture is reserved for his little jokes with himself— though honestly, a lot of his references to earth culture full stop seem to be inside jokes at the expense of others. I doubt Cassiopeia knew she was named after the infamously vain ancient queen, for example. John also quotes things at people without explaining what he means, like when he quotes Shakespeare and Hans Christian Andersen at Harrow; he's not really sharing it, he's mostly using it to isolate the other person in the conversation, or make himself seem unknowable and superior. It's honestly very telling that when given the choice John will name most things biblically or classically. It does partially feel like he's desperately scraping to preserve something of his childhood and the home he destroyed (especially with the renaming of Gideon to the Māori translation Kiriona, but... well, he literally renamed her and made her into a walking corpse teenage soldier so :/), but when you look at how he deploys earth culture on the whole, it usually becomes weird and imperialistic and weaponised. He's not really preserving lost art, he's selectively using it for his own agenda, and he's often using the two biggest things that were ever co-opted by conservatives and imperialists, the classical world and biblical convention.

[lemon-mint-writes]

I have the beginning, climax, and final scene so clearly planned out and have gone over them so many times but the rising and falling action are so blurry/messy. Idk why it turned out that way I just find it interesting. I know what I want my first and final impressions to be, and I know what dramatic peaks I want to hit (a.k.a. most Painful monents mwuhaha). Hoping that as I write things start falling into place.

[flxwinghair]

“I’m only doing this because I love you.”

@megaeracarrow

[Megaera's yandere] ; from HERE

♛ --

         ❝ You-- ❞ He tried to start, but the words simply couldn't escape from his mouth, the scene too horrifying in front of him to even be able to comment fully.

        The woman had always seemed like an extremist -- and this seemed to take the cake. Oh gods, why?

        He would have DROPPED is cane if he hadn't had the sense enough to keep it close by him and held onto tight. His body was shaking. his muscles tight, unable to move.

        Coldness had desperately tried to cling to his form -- but it couldn't have been properly done, even if it had been ingrained into his very being since a very, very young age. No. He was completely shattered, and rightfully so.

        His eyes trailed up to hers -- almost unable to meet them, as he seemed suddenly shy when it came to such a woman.

        Trying again--

        ❝ W - Why? ❞ His voice unable to hold back the crack forming within it, almost to indicate that she had effectively caused him to break into two.

@megaeracarrow

[count-v-dracula]

What is something that was never addressed at all in the canon material that you have independently developed for your muse?

{ meme } | accepting

//ha...hahaHAHAHA!!! Sorry but I sincerely laughed out loud in scorn at this XD Where do I begin!??

Let's start with what you and I have done <3 We came up with how Aleera and Dracula met. Technically this isn't "independent," but I much rather prefer creating backstories concerning other characters in VH with other rpers instead of doing it on my own (so when this fandom HAPPENS to get fresh blood our own developed backstories/headcanons don't clash) Their own little drama and we're even doing that fun 1980s AU with them so our two psychopaths can fall in love again. And how long have we been holding down the VH fandom/fort on this site? Like almost 10 years???? Your Aleera and my Vlad have been here so long XD And may I say THANK YOU AND BLESS YOU for adding Anna so Vlad can have someone to hate <3

But as for my own stuff not involving other rpers, I basically have headcanoned, and have incorporated a lot of history (with some dates fudged, which I don't like doing because I like accuracy, but some dates in the film don't quite go with history so~), into making Vlad much more than a "mwuhaha I'm a vampire! I'm a villain who is going to destroy mankind!" please that is so old and unoriginal, Mr. Sommers.

In my history for him, he has/had a family that he loved and wanted to have them love him back. Really? He was so terribly human before that momentous event/death of his life. He was born into a life to serve and was predestined to be who and what he was from the moment of his birth. He knew what love was, he was put into situations that sparked and fed his anger that coursed through him until his dying breath, and that anger deepened and carried over into his immortal life. His father was distant and treated him more like a soldier and less like a son. His younger brother was his treasure, his heart -- and when Radu turned away from him and their calling, Vlad hated him and felt like he failed in his task in raising his brother when they were political prisoners. Vlad despises being a failure! And he found and lost hope time and again.

He didn't become Count Dracula for nothing or just for the sake to be evil -- all events and choices he made put him on that path. He adopted immortality and the evil that came with it for various reasons: he didn't want to die a cowards death, he wanted more time to have a truly happy life where he felt free, he wanted what he couldn't have as a man, and -- he did want to ultimately defy God. I'm not trying to redeem him at all with these motives of his, or even get sympathy for him because he really is terrible when all is said and done, but I try to make him understandable.