#our old life together

[nathan-thiry]

I did. Either in writing or saying it to you. You are still beautiful to me. I wish I could say it to you again. But, obviously my time has passed. Maybe one day you’ll see how much I cared for you. I’m human, we make mistakes and we learn and move on. I wish I was moving on with you instead of trying to forget you. But forgetting you is causing immense pain in my heart and soul. Maybe it’s because I can’t talk to you for the next two years. I can’t explain my side or hear your side. I just want to talk to you. I miss your voice. I miss your smile. I miss your touch. I miss all of you. I can’t even idolize anyone else the same way as I see you. I don’t think you realize how much I loved you. And still, for some reason, do love you. Did I mean something to you? You wanted to do this “life thing” with me, but now I got kicked to the curb and my heart stomped on. I hope you see this one day if you look at my profile. Take it for what it’s worth. My everything. I miss our life together.

[habken]

part of me feels a bit guilty about sharing the fusion au stuff cause it’s not really just my idea, it was an au I built up with my friend :’) we were gonna write a fic and everything, but obviously that never happened lol

We had so much plotted out for it though and I’m trying to find our old 2020 messages 😭

[rubydubydoo122]

Guys, if we make Tim South East Asian, we can have all the boy Robins be Brown. Dick's Romani, a large amount of people Hc Jason as Latino, and Damian is Arab. I'm pretty sure the current Tim hc race is half Korean, but like... I can see Tim being half Singaporean, or Indonesian. It would also be really funny because it would make Damian and Tim look really similar and just imagine a random white lady walking up to the both of them and going "Oh! is this your brother?" and Damian going "No! I'm not related to Drake!" and it happens seven times and ends in Damian begrudgingly saying, "Yes, though he is adopted"

[rearranging-deck-chairs]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[isa-ah]

I had the stupidest luck w dinner LOL we got burgers from our favorite place for our anni (after only having wine and coffee all day. and a LOT of it!) and when my burger got here they'd slathered on the house sauce (I'm allergic) so I had to gut the bun a bunch to get it all off and while I was doing that my mother in law mixed up our fries (I'm allergic to hers) and stirred mine into her chicken nuggets (wheat AND chicken??) so I was legit sitting there pulling chicken crumbs off my fries before I ate them LOL

[dootznbootz]

Odypen definitely and equivalently adore each other BUT I weirdly can't see them as the type to actually say "I Love you".

They still definitely vocalize their love for each other but it's more so in "My Joy", and "Extraordinary Woman", "Strange Woman/Man", etc. And very cheesy lines (both say some cheesy shit in the Odyssey, and he definitely does in the Iliad as well. "Joy like a drowning sailor seeing land" bit???)

I could see "I adore you" but even then, that's probably during very specific moments but the actual "I love you"??? I just typed it just now for fic shit and... It weirdly just didn't feel right and I don't know why. 😅

Idk maybe it's kind of because I see them as over the top in ways, they love wordplay and riddles and I think they'd almost think "...That's not good enough >:( " about it??? I don't know???😂

[fangirlforeversthings]

Them: imagine all of your favourite fictional characters coming together in a meet up

Me:........soo.......

...four ancient spartans including a polemarkhos a king a misthios and a general, a pirate captain, two dwarfs, an elf, the King of gondor, a former assasin te*rorist, three superheroes, five witchers, two vampires, two jedi knights, a jedi master and his clone commander, a clone captain, a Senator, a mandalorian and his adoptive alien son, a firebending war general, and the devil walked into a bar....

[stabbyfoxandrew]

just got a notification from my phone calendar saying "It's almost alfo's birthday, do you want to plan something?"

[mumintroll]

my meet cutes with every boy ive liked since i was 15 were all so good its not fair i hope i find a relationship with a nice story & it doesnt just end up being from tinder lol

[hawkeyeslaughter]

and if i told you guys i was back from the dead

[thenwethrowitonthefire]

it doesn't have to be that way.

okay

I need you to know that I've been thinking about this ask non-stop for the last 3 days. This song came for us all and took us under its wing. I live here. It's a gem of a song. (This reply will get very long.)

My first time hearing it was live, as it was for a bunch of us as the album release was at the beginning of the tour. To set the scene, I was obviously really excited for any new songs I'd be hearing that night, and then Russell introduced the song like this:

"This is another brand new song for any of you who feel like maybe you're not on the right course. [He pauses briefly.] It's a song that's called 'It Doesn't Have To Be That Way'."

I was already nearly in tears, and then it started:

They always said that you cannot change your mind, Do it once and you're defined, do it twice and you're divine

...

It doesn't have to be that way, okay?

Every line of the entire song hit me like a brick while also being the most comforting thing I've ever heard. It was beautiful. And coming from the guys who for over a decade have been my personal champions of "things not having to be that way", the guys who are my people, who have by their very existence been telling us all this exact message for all these years. And here it was, in words, aimed at all of us.

They always said that you need to have a plan, Doesn't matter, any plan, any plan they'll understand, It doesn't have to be that way, okay?

... They've not been known to go for songs that bring people to tears, and I'm not known to be the kind of person to listen to songs and cry. And yet here we were.

While I can write an essay on every verse, a part that's especially meaningful to me, as a queer person, as an aspec person, is this:

They always said that it must reflect your life, And incorporate your strife, maybe mentioning your wife, It doesn't have to be that way, okay?

These *are* lines that seem to reflect their life (the entire song seems to, just as it does ours), and they're all things I've always loved so much about them, things that have paved the way for all of us. But I'm going to especially highlight the "maybe mentioning your wife" line. Here we have two (likely) heterosexual men, but they don't bring their love lives to the public eye - very consciously, and by choice. What they do with their lives is all about their music. Their lives are highly meaningful, to them and to so many people, and you don't need amatonormativity or the nuclear family to have a beautifully meaningful life. They show that every day, in all they do. Their work has always attracted many queer people of all sorts for obvious reasons, and it's been so easy to find aspec people among the fans which is a real treat. While they likely both have partners, the beauty is that we don't really know. We don't know that part of their lives and we don't need to know to know them, if they're not telling us it doesn't concern us. There's a lot of people who don't understand this though, people who feel like they don't know who Sparks are as people because these people feel like in order to know who a person is, they need to know their relationship status and whether they have a family. (In reality these people are looking at the wrong things, they're trying to classify and understand life in the only way they know, and therefore they seem to be unable to see what's there.) The added beauty of all this is that it doesn't just gives Sparks some privacy, but also it creates a safe space for all of us who aren't looking to live that way, who aren't looking to build our lives around a romantic partner, for whom the ideal life isn't one where you build a family, or for whom that do wish to live that way but where it isn't the thing that defines you. You don't have to mention a partner or make your life about that. It doesn't have to be that way, okay?

And then there's those parts of the song that go,

I may be wrong, I'll pay for it, I'll pay for it,

No chart-bound song, I'll pay for it, I'll pay for it,

No sing along, I'll pay for it, I'll pay for it

I'll pay for it

Which can be read and felt in a number of ways which all mean so much to me ... There's their own lives in it, where they've always done things their way, where people may tell them to not do things that way, and where it might not work out - I'll pay for it, I'll pay for it. Theres our lives, where we equally all make our decisions, try to just live our own ways to the best of our abilities and where we make mistakes - I'll pay for it, I'll pay for it.

And then, thirdly, to me, there's the feeling to it where they've got our backs. No chart-bound song, no sing along, that can be about an album not becoming the success it was hoped to be, but if you just look at No sing along, I'll pay for it, I'll pay for it, to me there's also an aspect of not wishing it upon another - instead carrying it for you, don't sing along. (This feeling feels further supported by the ending of the song, how 'bout a drink, I'll pay for it, it's been too long, I'll pay for it, which to me reads as paying for that drink for your friend so no one has to go through it alone nor without support.)

I'll look uncool, I'll pay for it, I'll pay for it

I'll look the fool, I'll pay for it, I'll pay for it

I'll look too schooled, I'll pay for it, I'll pay for it

I'll pay for it

The price of authenticity, the price of following your heart and your beliefs. And we all felt that.

As you can tell, this is one really really special song. It had so many of us in tears. We all spoke about it for weeks, I'm still talking about it. It's kind of like Sparks' life concepts we all already understood, that drew us here in the first place, got beautifully distilled into a song. (So much of this recent album has that quality, and it was felt all throughout the entire tour too.)

Every night Russell gave the song a slightly different introduction that hit people right in their heart. There's a quality to it performed live that makes it hit even harder than on the album. I recorded it at every show I've seen. Here's two of them:

... it especially hits hard when you're near the front, looking at these guys with your big eyes, locking eyes for a second and you know they know. (I also did a quick shot of Ron's Jordans here, seeing him wear them was always a dream of mine and here I was, stood right in front of him seeing him wear Jordans.)

[giddlygoat]

my brother can make me laugh without moving at all. he can make me laugh on command, just by existing, and there is no physical tell or indication that it is about to happen. it’s like he can will me to laugh and i will. of course we’re not telepathic, but we do speak in unison sometimes. we improvise like no one’s business. we could fool anyone into believing we are psychically linked. when i try to explain it, i sound silly saying it out loud, but i really CAN tell what he’s thinking. we exchange so much information just with a look. he can make me cry laughing and he doesn’t even have to move

[imflyingfish]

working in an art gallery and talking to a lot of full time artists has given me CRAZY imposter syndrome btw lmao

[rainingincale]

.

[naranjapetrificada]

I'm sorry but I just need to yell into the ether about how Ed was totally ready take Stede in his arms so they could die together when it looked like Stede wasn't eligible for the Act of Grace

[yioh]

some of my fave ships over the last few years !!!