#people just look at any vampire and say ‘wow like Dracula’

[yallemagne]

Me, the other day when I was going to a Ren Faire with my friends: “STOP saying I look like Dracula. He’s DUMB and he’s a COWARD and I’m NOT A COWARD.”

[graciereadshannigram]

hey fam, welcome to the May 2024 roundup of the best hannigram fics i've read this past month! i read several million words worth of fics, and these were the cream of the crop. i also managed to rewatch the show for the fifth time!! (unemployment has its perks lmao)

as a reminder: the ingredients for a five star rating typically (but not always!!) include some combination of a.) believable characterizations of both Hannibal and Will, b.) compelling plot and/or character arcs, and c.) high quality smut.

that being said, my judgment of the aforementioned ingredients is powered almost exclusively by vibes. as such, it is incredibly subjective.

you can find past rec lists below:

February March April

and if you have any recs of your own for me, PLEASE SHARE.

anyway, in no particular order, let's go!

~

Overcoming by purefoysgirl

Word Count: 547.5k Summary: A Victorian A/B/O romance in which Hannibal Lecter is the future Duke of Westvale who has been away at war for the past ten years. His Grandfather has made good on a contract made shortly after Hannibal's birth to procure him a wife. It was supposed to be easy. Naturally, with the Omega, Will, given in the place of his twin sister, it is anything but, because if there is one thing Hannibal Lecter despises, it's Omegas.

This fic had me holding back tears when it ended (after sobbing a couple different times). This was... incredible. What a fucking UNDERTAKING this author committed to, and despite this being a doorstopper of a fic, the plot did not miss a single beat. Just... wow. For the love of god, please read this.

Falls the Shadow by littlesystems

Word Count: 72.4k Summary: "You're a psychiatrist," Will says. "Between your personal and professional lives you must have met thousands of people, you must know dozens of different flavors of pathology. Do you know anyone who would take me as I am? Who would be able to love me," he gestures in a sweeping motion, from his messy hair to his stained knee, "just as I am?" "I do." Bedelia's words shock Will into stillness. “Really?” AKA an AU where Bedelia is Will’s psychiatrist instead of Hannibal, Will makes a series of increasingly questionable life choices, and no one should ever take Bedelia’s advice. Ever.

GIMME MORE STARSSSSSSSS. Bedelia as Will's psychiatrist was brilliant, holy shit. And Will understanding Hannibal and completely accepting him? This is something I see so rarely done in fics. Will always makes him be a lot less manipulative, or at least goes through heavy angst over it. But in this? Will was immediately endeared because that's just who Hannibal is.

Bram Stoker's HANNIBAL by DBMars

Word Count: 586.7k Summary: Love Never Dies. "I have crossed oceans of time to find you." Hannibal + Bram Stoker's Dracula + the classic novel = a new version of the seductive vampire legend. Count Hannibal Lecter loses the thing most precious to him -- the love of his life. God is beyond measure in wanton malice, and matchless in his irony. And so Hannibal renounces God, and becomes an immortal monster that feeds on the blood of the living. 400 years after losing his beloved, Count Lecter meets a man who looks exactly like the husband he lost -- reborn and returned. But who could learn to love a monster?

@dbmars you are a fucking genius. I am honestly still processing and figuring out how to communicate just how amazing this fic was. Do yourself a favor and go read it NOW.

the book of jonah by zipegs

Word Count: 18.1k Summary: A sudden breath of hot wind presses through the trees. For a moment, it feels fresh, alive, and then the dust—the pollen—comes along with it, a parasite hitched on the back of the breeze. Will is ravenous. --- After the fall, Will and Hannibal sojourn in a remote, decrepit cabin in South America while they await Chiyoh’s return. But something here is afflicting them, and it’s only getting worse.

Okay, bear with me. THIS WAS FUCKING AMAZING. I haven't felt this way after consuming a piece of media since I watched Guillermo del Toro's The Autopsy episode. Psychological horror mixed with body horror mixed with smut??? I guess that does it for me. I literally can't stop thinking about this fic. It's been two weeks and I am STILL thinking about it.

Wrong by HotMolasses (@snazzymolasses here on tumblr)

Word Count: 4.2k Summary: Will roughly rubbed his arm across his mouth again, trying to rub it off. Rub off the scent of Alana, after they’d kissed. After she’d kissed him. Or he’d kissed her? It was mutual. Until it wasn’t. Until Will breathed in her scent, so familiar, so Alpha, so…wrong. He’d pulled back forcibly, unable to hide the expression of revulsion on his face. “I…I need to go.” he said, sweeping his coat off the back of a chair on his way towards the door. “Lock up when you leave.” The weather was crap, and it probably wasn’t smart to drive in the snow while he was in pre-heat, but Will didn’t know what else to do. He needed to figure this out, he needed to talk to the only person who understood him. He needed to talk to Hannibal.

So ummmmmmm what do I need to do to turn this into like a whole AU?? As always, this was a total home run. Every single bit of it was perfect.

as soft, as wide as air by BlackKnightSatellite

Word Count: 193.9k Summary: After surviving the fall, Will finds he has far fewer hesitations about joining Hannibal than he would have guessed. Character death, but not Will or Hannibal.

Well shit. I read this immediately after a full rewatch of the show (in four days no less) and THIS is my new season 4 canon. It's brilliant and actually reads like a proper season would. And I love how it gives all the characters a concluded story line. Aside from Will and Hannibal. I also loved how much this explored Will's instability and how his mental state would be affected after he finally slung off all the guilt and allowed himself to fully enjoy killing. All around very good.

The Dispersal Method by @victorineb

Word Count: 16.9k Summary: It’s a normal fall day in the forest for Will Graham. Dead body in front of him, cannibal psychiatrist behind him, the usual. Then Will brushes against the wrong flower, and suddenly neither he nor Hannibal can keep their hands off each other. Now, Will must navigate his way out of the crime scene and Jack’s scrutiny while also trying not to jump Hannibal’s bones at every opportunity. Well, one out of three ain’t bad. Set nebulously in s2, post-Will's release from the BSHCI. Will’s a conflicted honeypot, Hannibal’s a (not-so) secretly-besotted asshole, and nobody has brought enough lube.

THIS IS THE BEST SEX POLLEN I'VE EVER READ. Seriously. The BEST out of pretty much any fandom (at least so far).

Between the Shadow and the Soul by raiast

Word Count: 48.7k Summary: When Will decides to stop taking his suppressants neither he nor Hannibal can deny the attraction between them. After nearly a decade of running from his biology, Will is faced with his primitive Omega urges full force. As if navigating his hormones wasn't enough, there is a killer at large with a very specific motive that seems to only be targeting preteen boys.

This might be my new favorite ABO fic? And one of the better case fics out there.

Sleepover by EarthsickWithoutYou

Word Count: 70k Summary: Set in Season 1, after "Fromage." Will is still confused about his kiss with Alana and seeks romantic advice on how to date and be more "smooth" from Hannibal. Little does he know that Hannibal is madly, passionately obsessed with him, and desperately jealous. Needless to say, Dr. Lecter is all too happy to teach Will everything he knows about love and dating.

This was pretty fluffy, tender, and fun, and it was exactly what I needed after finishing a heavier fic

Alana Finds Out by @victorineb

Word Count: 32.1k Summary: A series of one-shots in which Alana Bloom discovers, in the midst of various tropes, that her boyfriend Hannibal Lecter's feelings for Will Graham run far deeper than friendship. Basically a chance for Alana to shout at the pair of emotionally-repressed idiots whilst still indulging in much Hannigram loveliness.

Oh I loved all of this. This scratched that itch in my brain that loves when Alana realizes that Hannibal has wanted Will all along. And some of these one-shots are genuinely hysterical. Love.

Doctor's Orders by JSinister32

Word Count: 29.2k Summary: “He’s dead on his feet, Jack. I do not understand how you allowed him to come when he’s so obviously ill. There have been too many hours in service of your needs, so many that it seems to have affected any sleep that he may have gotten over the past few weeks. From what you and I have discussed, he has a difficult time shutting his mind down under the best of circumstances and this case today has clearly gotten to him.” The doctor stepped closer to the profiler, peering into his eyes as Will tried to focus. “Will? Can you hear me?” Will Graham has never been particularly good at taking care of himself. When he comes down with a severe cold while working on a string of murders, the new psychiatrist on retainer, Doctor Hannibal Lecter, offers to care for him. Will he be able to keep his feelings in check while Hannibal is in his home? Hannibal Lecter can't get the profiler working for the Violent Crimes unit out of his mind. When given the opportunity to care for him when he's ill, will his feelings for the other man come to light?

TENDER. I want like 70k more words of this. Especially Hannibal putting Jack in his place. Especially Hannibal washing Will's hair. Mmm. There's just something so good about Will letting Hannibal take care of him.

The First Condition of Immortality is Death by OneHandedBooks

Word Count: 92.5k Summary: Hannibal’s heart stopped for the first time after he’d dragged himself and Will out of the frigid ocean onto the rocky shore at the bottom of the bluff.

Oh this was GOOD. Very tender, good characterizations, and loved how Will's hallucinations were portrayed. This was just all a really good exploration of how their relationship could have progressed. This author also is incredibly good at showing the scenes in a way that I could watch them unfold in my head. This felt like a crystal clear movie.

What Do The Dead Know? by OneHandedBooks

Word Count: 7.6k Summary: He looks up at her, haloed by the sun. She could be anyone. No one. St. Abigail, patron of lilies and last chances. AU: What if Will joined Hannibal willingly after the Uffizi Gallery and they shared a few tense weeks in the world before Mason's men finally ran them down? In which Will writes, hallucinates, and succumbs to the dark side and Hannibal is a manipulative, brainwashing, bastard.

cw: Abigail/Will. But does it really count if it's a dream sequence? Regardless, this was something else, off the charts, big fan. The author NAILED the hallucinatory vibe that made this entire fic work so so well. Also, just Will working through his grief for Abigail this way made it that much more intense.

chimera of the chapel by bleakmidwinter

Word Count: 211.5k Summary: When Will Graham wakes up from a coma three months after the fall, Jack reveals that Hannibal Lecter didn't survive. Outside the realm of Hannibal's influence, Will decides to discover the full truth behind the world's sudden and seeming falsehood. Everybody seems to hold their own opinion on Hannibal's fate, but Will knows better than anyone that trust and honesty are as elusive as death.

The "presumed dead" trope might just be my new obsession. I adored this fic so much, the plot was incredible, the development of their relationship was spot on, and there were just some very tender moments.

wear my silence like a mask by bleakmidwinter

Word Count: 32.k Summary: After running into Hannibal at a Bass Pro Shop, Will is invited to a Masquerade Ball at his estate. Jack encourages him to attend for an opportunity to catch the Ripper. Extenuating circumstances tempt Will down an even graver path; Romance with the Ripper.

Three words: masked anonymous sex. That's all.

The Voices and the Shadows by darlinghogwarts, MaddyHughes

Word Count: 114.6k Summary: “The Chesapeake Ripper? The serial killer? That's a grisly thing to find at the bottom of a drink. Most people say oblivion ...or possibly sex.” Hannibal sips his wine again. “Why are you thinking about a murderer on your birthday, Will? Is it part of your degree?” “He is a part of my degree by my own choice. My supervisor didn’t approve, but…” He sighs. “I insisted.” AU where Will—a Masters student studying the Chesapeake Ripper—gets drunk on his birthday and meets an intriguing man at the bar.

Man, I wish I had had Hannibal as my thesis supervisor in grad school, hot damn. (Mine was pretty much too busy to help with anything, ended up doing it all myself – would not recommend.) This was was damn near perfect. I needed some good old fashioned angst. With a good and fluffy ending. This was a good AU!

Chasing Thoroughbreds by HigherMagic

Word Count: 42.8k Summary: After the fall, Chiyoh rescues Will and Hannibal and takes them to the Lecter home in Lithuania. When Hannibal wakes up, his memories of everything - Will, being the Ripper, everything since Mischa's death - are gone. Will's only problem with that is that killing Hannibal won't be nearly as satisfying if he doesn't understand why. Wrestling with his own feelings, or what's left in the tattered mess of them after the fight with Dolarhyde, Will stays, hoping that Hannibal will recover and give him the opportunity he's waiting for. But there are others who remember what Hannibal did, all those years ago, and they have their own bone to pick.

Ugh pretty sure I love almost everything HigherMagic writes and this did not disappoint. This was fantastic. I was absolutely captivated by Will's development through this and Hannibal was just as good.

Volto Larva by TreacleA

Word Count: 39k Summary: Will is having trouble unwinding after work. Hannibal helpfully suggests somewhere that may assist with that, with absolutely no ulterior motive whatsoever.

So ummmm I'm still blushing (in the best way) over parts of this fic because FUCK this is scorching. Anyway. That's all I've got to say LOL.

[777rare]

ASTROLOGY OBSERVATIONS PT.6

THESE NOTES ARE ONLY A STUDY OF MINE AND HAS/HAS NOT BEEN PROVEN YET, SO IF IT DOES NOT RESONATE WITH YOU, FORGIVE ME AS IT WAS ONLY A STUDY/OBSERVATION OF MINE.

I DO NOT PLAGIARIZE, COPY OR REWORD ANY OF MY FELLOW ASTROLOGY OBSERVERS POSTS AND I DEMAND THE SAME IN RETURN

DO NOT READ FURTHUR IF YOU ARE A MINOR.

hiii, I am so sorry for not responding to any asks or being active here. I know I can't give any excuse but yes, I have been travelling a lot recently and I have only some time to check out some posts n all here. I'll make sure to respond to my loving readers asks so please be patient, I'm sorry. So yeah! I'm here now and I hope u enjoy!❤🙌🏻

kiss asteroid-venus (esp.conjunction, sextile) are such sensual, romantic kisses. They're amazing kissers. They can make anyone fall head over heels for them after just one kiss hahaha. They love love love hickeys, neck kisses so much (giving and receiving).💋👄💓

Angel asteroid in pisces/12th House/ in pisces degree(12°,24°) natives recieve guidance and messages from their angels intuitively, like through sudden thoughts, while daydreaming and visions. They also receive messages and guidance through their dreams while asleep and through meditation.👼😇🧘‍♀️👁🧿

Kiss asteroid in earth signs are the most sensual kissers. So damn- 😩🤒 godd. The most sexc kisses for real.🤌🏻🔥

I feel like kiss asteroid in Capricorn/aquarius gon have their first kiss a little late in their life or if they have had it early it would be unexpected or not so enjoyable. I don't know. Just guessing. Please let me know how this relates. Doesn't matter if it isn't true, I would be grateful for your interaction.❤😊

born asteroid aspecting 3+ personal planets natives are born to accomplish a lot of things in this birth. These natives become a lot of things in life like a singer, actor, dancer, politician, anything more. Example: Arnold Schwarzenegger has born asteroid aspecting mercury,venus,mars, jupiter and his born asteroid is conjunct mercury and venus. He became an actor(venus=art,drama,creativity), a bodybuilder(mars= muscles, stamina), a politician(mercury= wit,intelligence, communicator, messenger) he also came to be known by a lot of people in the world( jupiter= expander, worship, attention, luck). Minor aspects count as well! Never ignore minor aspects in any kind of observation as it is equally important too.☁️☀️💓

Transylvania asteroid aspecting ascendant natives suit the vampire/Dracula look. These guys look amazing when they put on fangs. A lot of people find these natives alluring yet scary. Like people be like "wow, brrrr"-😮😳😰

Check which sign/house jupiter is in your natal chart. Since jupiter expands immensely, that would be the vibes you give off the most. Ex: jupiter in fire sign or house give off vibes that project activeness, passion and even too much fire in their aura or anger at times. People may feel They are always angry or upset because they have this angry look or glare or even just a face of that sort.💥

Pars fortunae/part of fortune asteroid- venus(esp. Conjunct or sextile) natives can get lots of fortune if they do anything related to beauty, jewelery, clothing, fashion and all things related to venus. These natives can also have a lot of fortune because of their own beauty.💅🏻👄🙌🏻

Natives with sweet asteroid conjunct sun/moon/venus are honestly the most sweetest people alive. They're so so damn sweet and loving in nature. These natives are so sweet you could be diabetic after hearing them say something about you lmfao😩💓❤🤌🏻

asteroids mentioned: 13954,8267,11727,1537,11911

That's it for today, I know it's not much but im trying my best so I really hope you guys enjoyed!❤🫂 And again I will reply to all the asks and I'll be more active soon. Thankyou so much for your time, bye!❤🏝

[rallamajoop]

Some statistics on Lucy and the odds of surviving (non-vampiric) blood transfusions

Because it’s Dracula-season again, and because I am absolutely that kind of nerd, I spent some time calculating the actual odds of Lucy surviving all those blood transfusions from unrelated donors. To summarise what I found up front: Lucy's odds aren't great, but they're still a lot higher than you might think.

Now, I’m not the first person ever to tackle this question, and having no medical qualifications whatsoever, I'm not the best person either. But figuring out the answer to my own satisfaction was a great excuse to learn a whole lot of fascinating stuff that took some digging to figure out, so (with the caveat that I am entirely open to corrections from real professionals) naturally now I want to share it.

The complete world history of attempted blood transfusions is way beyond scope for us here (you can find plenty of sources on it online if you’re curious). But as Stoker’s text aptly demonstrates, the science of blood transfusion had come a long way by the Victorian era – just not the means for doctors to reliably predict which transfusions would be successful, and which would simply kill the patient. The principle behind the basic A, B and O blood types wouldn’t be discovered until 1900 – 4 years after Dracula was published, and wouldn't become part of general medical practice for much longer – and the additional Rh-factors wouldn’t be discovered until 1939. In Stoker's day, doctors were still so far behind the ball some of them thought transfusing milk into people suffering blood loss was a good idea (yes, really). And though I'm focusing on blood groups here, it goes without saying there are plenty of other risks that come from letting any Victorian-era doctor open your veins.

That said, what the average person knows about how blood types work may not be all that much advanced today from what doctors knew in the 1890s. It’s easy to come out of Dracula thinking, “Wow, they gave Lucy blood from four different people? The odds all their blood types would matched hers must be minuscule!” (and a quick search of the web for this topic will find people asking exactly that). But there are several factors which make Lucy’s chances a whole lot better than they might look on paper.

(Image source)

For one thing, even though there are many different blood groups to worry about, some are much more common than others. If just one blood group accounts for half the population (which is actually true of some countries), then Lucy’s odds of hitting four donors with the same group just by chance would go way up.

But far more important is the fact that blood groups don’t have to be a 'match' to be compatible. If Lucy is one of the 2% of the British population with the blood group AB+, she’d be a universal recipient – theoretically capable of receiving blood from anyone without adverse reactions. Similarly, if any of her donors were O-, she’s in luck again, because that makes them a universal donor. If Lucy herself is O-, however, she’s in trouble: universal donors can donate to any other group, but they can only receive from other O-negs.

Confused? Time to get a bit more technical.

When receiving blood, your greatest enemy is your own immune system. Vital as all those immune cells are, they are not smart, and have no way of knowing that all this foreign blood suddenly flooding your system is friendly. If the don’t recognise those blood cells, they’ll attack them, bonding to their surface and causing cells to clump together and form clots which can clog up your arteries and kill you. Transfusing the wrong blood type can and likely will kill you.

The immune system identifies blood cells as intruders via specific antigens found on the cell’s surface. The most important antigens in blood matching systems are the A and B antigens, and secondarily the Rhesus antigens (marked + or -). Some people have all of these antigens (AB+), some have none (O- with the ‘O’ more literally indicating a ‘0’ or a null) and many have some but not all (A+, B-, O+, etc). Meanwhile, the immune system of the recipient body, much like your racist uncle, will attack most anything with distinguishing features it hasn't seen before (like I said, it’s not smart). A blood cell which is missing a familiar antigen will slip through, but a blood cell sporting an unfamiliar antigen will trigger a reaction. So the immune system of someone with B-type blood will have issues with any A-type blood you try and transfuse in, but will be just fine with B or O, since O lacks any antigens to mark it as an intruder.

Once you know what you’re looking for, A, B, AB and O type blood can be identified fairly easily, just by mixing blood or antibodies and watching the reaction. I’ve seen some suggestions that this may have been understood even to some of the better-informed doctors in Victorian times: when unsure if a transfusion would be safe, they could try transfusing just a small amount of blood, watch for a bad reaction, and continue only if things look good. If you absolutely have to do a blood transfusion without any testing though, an immediate family member is your best bet: blood types can still differ among a family, but there’s a strong genetic component. (Sadly, this wouldn’t have been an option for Lucy, as her mother was already unwell, and would not have been considered a good transfusion candidate.)

Things get more complicated when you add in the Rhesus factor, which wasn’t discovered until some decades later, and for good reason: bad reactions to Rh+ blood develop in Rh- people only after that first transfusion. While A and B types might be like your racist uncle, the Rh factor is more like putting a dog on your basketball team: you’ll get away with it once, because you’ve brought in something so unexpected no-one’s made a rule about it yet (let alone bothered to come up with anti-dog basketball tactics). Unlike the standard A and B antigens, the immune system has to have 1) seen Rh+ blood, and 2) spent some time thinking about a good plan of attack before it’s ready to do anything about it – by which point the donor blood should be out of your system anyway. It's only the next transfusion after that where you can hit problems.

In practice, the Rh factor is of most concern to Rh- mothers carrying Rh+ babies. The first baby should be fine, but the delivery process can result in some mixing of the mother and baby's blood ‒ and that can leave her immune system primed to take offense at any future passengers of the Rh+ persuasion (why this apparently doesn’t also apply to A and B type babies in A or B negative mothers I’m not sure, but obviously the Rh-immune response works differently). With all today’s modern medical technology, this is something doctors can identify in expectant parents and manage with medication, but obviously they're still going to want to avoid transfusing Rh+ blood into an Rh- patient (especially if they’ve already got Rh+ kids).

Regardless, for our purposes, it’s only from the second transfusion that the Rh factor could trip you up. So could that be an issue for Lucy, if she’s getting so many transfusions? It's harder to find good info on exactly how long the Rh immune reaction takes to develop after the first transfusion, but most of what I could find suggests we’re looking at a period of weeks to months at least. So that’s good news for Lucy: we can ignore Rh factors when we’re calculating her odds of survival.

As a minor aside here, the standard eight blood types you can get by combining A, B and the Rhesus factor aren’t technically the only blood types out there. These three antigens matter most because people both with and without them are common in the broader human population, but a small minority of people are missing other antigens that the rest of us get as standard. European blood banks apparently also classify blood by a Kell factor, and people with anaemia and other conditions likely to require regular transfusions may be checked for several other potential Rh-like issues. A handful of people worldwide have blood classified as neither Rh+ or Rh-, but Rh-null – missing antigens common to 99.9% of the human population, and being in that class is a very mixed blessing. Blood donations from someone Rh-null can be used in recipients with rare blood types that would make them incompatible with almost any other donor. But if someone Rh-null ever needs a blood donation themselves, they’re in big trouble.

So, enough theory. What’s all this mean for Lucy’s odds of making it through 4 blood transfusions from unrelated donors?

Unsurprisingly, ratios of different blood groups vary a lot country to country and population to population, so I looked up ratios in modern Britain (Van Helsing is Dutch, of course, but blood groups in the Netherlands are similar enough to those in the UK that we’ll ignore that, just for simplicity). It’s possible these ratios have drifted since Victorian times, but figuring out how is so far beyond scope here we’re not going to worry about it. As discussed above, we’ll also ignore Rh factors – Lucy’s almost certainly never had a blood transfusion or a baby before, and everything happens far too fast for an Rh-immune response to kick in.

Alright. It’s statistics time!

We don't know Lucy's blood group, so any are possible. For each potential Lucy-blood-group, we can generate a list of blood groups which will be compatible donors (we'll call that list C(x)), and from that, we can calculate the probability that she'll be compatible with any randomly-selected donor. For Lucy to survive, we need her to survive 4 successive blood transfusions, so we’re raising that survival probability to the power of 4. Then to calculate her overall probability of survival, we multiply the survival rate by the odds she’s in that blood group, and add them together (no need to divide by the total population, that’s an easy 100%). So if we let n = number of transfusions and P(x) = probability a person is in blood group x, we get the following lovely equation:

(Yes, I know, I'm sorry ‒ someone out there is going to want to check my working, and I like to be transparent.)

And with that, (assuming I’m not just talking out of my arse with all those calculations), that suggests Lucy’s overall chances of surviving 4 different blood transfusions is about: (drum roll)... 27%. So, roughly 1 in 4.

The really savvy reader might notice that Lucy does not, technically, survive all four transfusions – she dies shortly after the fourth, so it’s conceivable that last transfusion was a mismatch. If we take the requirements down to where Lucy only needs to survive 3 transfusions, her odds go up to 34%, or closer to 1 in 3. Still not great, but given the sorts of crazy one-in-a-million coincidences all fiction is built on, that’s actually pretty reasonable. Even if you do factor in Rh compatibilities, we're still looking at around 21% survival rate after 4 transfusions, which are pretty decent odds in the world of Victorian medicine.

Do those odds sound a little high to you? Here’s something to keep in mind. On paper, Lucy’s odds of surviving even a single random-donor transfusion are only 65%. But given she survived that first transfusion, the odds go up that she’s in one of those near-universal blood groups, and they keep going up. Sure, every new transfusion has a new chance to kill you, but statistically speaking, every transfusion you survive marks you as someone who’s a little more likely to survive the next. So someone who's already survived 2 transfusions has a 76% chance of surviving a 3rd ‒ and if they do survive that 3rd, an 80% chance of surviving a 4th.

As another aside though, even after surviving four successive transfusions, the odds Lucy’s in that lucky AB universal-recipient category are still only about 10% (compared to 3% of the base population). Statistically, it’s still far more likely she’s in the A-group ‒ the second largest group in the UK, and who can receive blood from the other largest group (O), letting them receive blood from a whooping 86% of the population without issue. Aren’t statistics wonderful?

Oh, all right – I’ll stop with the maths. We’ve made our point here.

Now, we could still point out that, for a supposedly-experienced physician, Stoker's Van Helsing seems pretty blase about the possibility his blood transfusions could backfire horribly ‒ but then, Lucy's already on death's door each time he resorts to asking for volunteers. He's doing the only thing that might save her life (and it does, until it doesn't).

To conclude, no-one is going to tell you Dracula makes sense. This is a book which offers no explanation for why Dracula should just happen land in England on the same town where his solicitor’s fiancée just is taking a holiday, let alone the rest of it. And Stoker had no way of knowing Lucy’s actual odds of surviving such a very Victorian procedure. But that whole blood transfusion sequence is far from being the least probable thing in the book. 

[iasmelaion]

WIP Tag Game

Rules: Share a snippet from whatever you’re currently working on, and then tag 5 people.

tagged by @firstelevens

tagging @pairofraggedclaws, @pineapplecrushface, @lugarn, @technicallyverycowboy, but no pressure! (also, wow, truly do not remember ANYONE's tumblr usernames without the little icon photos there to prompt me, damn. that took way longer than it should have /o\ )

Thank you for tagging me @firstelevens because it is providing me with the extra bit of motivation I need to finish up this ridiculous silly fic that started as a comment fic but that I just kept noodling away at because I didn't feel like working on anything else, lol. The prompt for this, for the record, was "vampire bucky au" and this is...not at all that, lol. These are, alas, the things that happen when you give me a prompt.

It's entirely Sam's fault that Bucky's first thought on realizing he’s been captured by vampires is: well, these guys aren't part of the big three. His second thought is: if vampires have been a thing all this time and no one fucking told me, I'm going to be so pissed. What the fuck else is real? Fairies? Wolfmen? Goddamn Sasquatch??

Ugh, if he survives, Bucky is never going to live this down. In his defense, how the fuck was he supposed to fight against fog. Bucky had been minding his own business, headed back to his apartment after acquiring some late-night take out, and he’d had about a second to think, that’s weird, it wasn’t foggy out earlier and then, when the fog did not move in fog-like ways, well, that’s not fog, but it doesn’t smell like any kind of gas either and then the damned vampires had coalesced out of the fog and surrounded him before he could run. 

“What the fuck are you?” he’d asked, baffled and pissed, and one of them had smiled, showing off some pretty gnarly and pointy teeth.

“We are vampires, of course.”

Then Bucky had felt the chill of fog behind him and a prick in his neck, and passed out, only to wake up on a plane.  

At least the vampires are polite. No one has tortured him so far, or even sucked his blood, and whatever they’ve drugged him with, it’s honestly kind of pleasant once he wakes up properly. He feels floaty and hazy and not particularly interested in breaking his bonds, not that he has any escape options other than jumping out of the plane, and anyway, this plane is even nicer than Zemo’s plane. Like, sure, his hands and feet are bound at the wrists and ankles, but he’s on a really comfy leather seat, and they’ve given him some water.

Also, and most importantly, the vampires don't appear to be especially tech-savvy. While he can’t feel his phone in his pocket anymore, no one has noticed Bucky twist the tip of his vibranium pinky, one of his panic button options, and one no one ever thinks to look for or prevent because it involves a motion that’s not physically possible in a flesh and blood pinky, not without breaking it, and definitely not independently. God bless Shuri’s cleverness in coming up with that one. Anyway, if Bucky’s got even a scrap of luck left, Sam is already on his trail. 

Though, fuck, it's not like Sam's gonna be prepared for vampires, what with them not being one of the big three and all. Bucky will have to gather what intel he can. Since they haven’t gagged him, he figures he might as well ask some woozy but totally reasonable questions.

“So…do you know Dracula?” he asks the vampire sitting across from him.

He doesn’t look much like a vampire at the moment, just an average white guy, apart from the eerie golden shade of his eyes.

“No,” says the vampire, lip curling slightly in what might be disgust, showing off the tip of a too-pointy canine.

“Do you, uh, want my blood?” Bucky asks. “A lot of people want my blood on account of how I’m a science experiment.”

The vampire blinks at him and frowns. “We do not want your blood.” Bucky tries and fails to place his accent. Dutch, maybe? Something European.

“Are you HYDRA?” asks Bucky. 

There’s no ostentatious squid-related branding or gloating about recovering the asset, so he doesn’t think so, but he figures he should ask.

The vampire wrinkles his nose. “Ugh, no,” he says. “We aren’t Nazis.”

“What do you want with me then?”

“We will not harm you. My master will speak with you soon,” says the vampire, and oh, that doesn’t bode well. “Sleep now,” continues the vampire, and Bucky wants to protest, but vampires have magic powers or what the fuck ever, he guesses, because he does in fact sleep.

It’s honestly kind of the best night of sleep he’s had in a while, so he’s in a pretty good mood for someone who’s been captured by vampires when he wakes up to being gently pulled out of a plush SUV and into the courtyard of—a castle? Bucky tries to crane his head up and around to get a feel for where the hell he is, but all he sees are starry skies and a lot of gray stone before he’s inexorably guided inside. While he’s no longer tied up or woozy, the vampires’ grip on him might as well be vibranium. He makes a tentative attempt to break free, just to gauge what it would take to escape, and is not encouraged by the results. He could do it, he thinks, but it would hurt. 

"Could we maybe talk about this?" tries Bucky, because it's what Sam would do, probably. "Do you have any demands, or am I in for yet another round of being experimented on or something? Because I'm not really into that. The third time is not the charm."

The vampires holding him are silent, and drag him down plushly carpeted, well-lit wide hallways into—what the fuck, is this a literal throne room?—where someone tall and pale and dark-haired is sprawled in the opulent seat at the other end of the room, at the far end of a long wooden table. The man looks familiar, and Bucky's about to start low-key panicking about this being more HYDRA bullshit, no matter what the vampire on the plane had said. Like, fuck, are HYDRA vampires now? Have they always been allied with vampires? He tries to make out what’s on the tapestries draped all over the walls, but then he gets closer and—

"Great Uncle Yakov?!" Bucky blurts out.

Because that man’s face is familiar—familiar as in family. They have the same damn dimple in their chin.

"James! It is wonderful to see you again!" says his surprisingly alive—undead? unalive?—great uncle, beaming in a way that shows off his pointy white canines.

[bluepunkmon]

Going to awkwardly transcribe the Last Voyage of the Demeter ravings I subjected my friend to. This is on the 0.01% chance I need to retrieve them for any reason.

The movie has A LOT of issues but I do appreciate this scrunkled Dracula.

Ok here we go

Last Voyage of the Demeter has the ELEMENTS to be a perfectly fine B grade schlock horror fest but I feel like its pieces are in the wrong places.

first thing wrong is the lead, Clemens, played by Corey Hawkins

the black guy here

I really really liked him, both his character and the performance

the character is a Cambridge trained doctor who is working on the ship for passage to London to look for a job (having trouble finding non racist employers)

his whole deal is that he likes science and reason and he wants the world to make sense

Only other 2 main characters of note are the ship captain, old guy who wants to retire after this voyage, and his grandson toby, small scamp, has a pet dog, likes livestock animals on board

its unclear why the grandpa has sole custody of Toby, but eh whatever

one of the movie's main mistakes is there's no buildup of tension - almost immediately went eh first sailor is attacked, dracula bites his neck, lots of gore, and every other kill goes about the same

(I realize I can just copy messages timestamp and all and will do so)

[9:37 AM, 10/19/2024] Owl: theres no escalation

[9:38 AM, 10/19/2024] Owl: another mistake is that Clemen's character trait leads him to all the wrong conclusions - other sailors immediately start talking about some great evil on the ship, he's slower to come around, but the random superstition ends up being right

[9:39 AM, 10/19/2024] Owl: later on (spoilers) toby gets chomped and dies. By this point there's like 5 guys left alive on the ship. its been established that some bitten people come back as like, weird grey eyed vampire lackeys. right before they dump toby's body into the water old captain man is like wait I see life! don't do it ! and toby comes back all snarly and then Clemens shoves him into the water.

[9:41 AM, 10/19/2024] Owl: right ok SO

[9:41 AM, 10/19/2024] Owl: i think the kills and Clemens' role should be altered slightly

[9:42 AM, 10/19/2024] Owl: ALSO they shoehorn in a whole character just to exposition dump and explain that dracula's a bloodsucker - would toss that element, I would trust the audience to figure what a vampire is. in this version no one says the word dracula except maybe at the end

[9:42 AM, 10/19/2024] Owl: OK SO ANYWAY. NEW STORY

[9:50 AM, 10/19/2024] Owl: beginning stays the same, crew signs on, Clemens signs on (he was almost left behind but Cpatain actually took him on bc Clemens saved his grandson's life and he was grateful, I like that part of the movie) and they take on cargo from a weird rich guy in translyvania

[9:57 AM, 10/19/2024] Owl: MAIN DIFFERENCE is that on the voyage, pretty early on TOby starts getting sick. Clemens takes him into his care, but despite his efforts poor kid passes away

[9:57 AM, 10/19/2024] Owl: everyone is devastated , captain beside himself yada yada

[9:58 AM, 10/19/2024] Owl: maybe some crew members bit distrustful of Clemens

[9:58 AM, 10/19/2024] Owl: anyway they're about to dump his body at sea when captain says wait I see movement, and everyone thinks its just an old man in mourning, but wait the shroud is moving, and wow Toby's alive !

[9:58 AM, 10/19/2024] Owl: his prayers have been answered its a miracle !

[9:59 AM, 10/19/2024] Owl: and theres some sailors joking later - about how hey Cambridge standards are pretty low maybe they're sign on and try the whole doctor thing once they hit land - but Clemens isn't laughing

[10:05 AM, 10/19/2024] Owl: no matter what anyone says he knows his shit, and he knows the difference between almost dead and dead dead , and that kid was dead he should not being walking around now

[10:06 AM, 10/19/2024] Owl: (in the movie the ships cook is big on religion maybe he can throw out some lazarus verses or something)

[10:06 AM, 10/19/2024] Owl: point is Clemens uses his love of logic and science to go towards the supernatural here, rather than denying it

[10:06 AM, 10/19/2024] Owl: he observes Toby and notices that the kid is def different - the ships dog keeps growling at him, and the livestock animals he cares for seem to freak out whenever he's around

[10:07 AM, 10/19/2024] Owl: later on they find that all the chickens and goats have been murdered (this happened in the movie too) and like, idk they blame it on ship dog, even though clemens examines the bodies and finds that they don't look like dog maulings

[10:08 AM, 10/19/2024] Owl: Toby gets paler and weirder. eventually ship captain says that he's still sick, so he stays in his quarters from now on. Clemens offers to examine the boy but the Captain straight up refuses

[10:08 AM, 10/19/2024] Owl: other crew members start getting ill, paler and sickly. Clemens tries to treat them, but their ailments continue. he doesn't recognize the disease, but finds that many have strange marks on their necks, almost like a bite

[10:11 AM, 10/19/2024] Owl: THEN at this point things escalate. first crew member vanishes. no blood on deck or anything he's just gone

[10:11 AM, 10/19/2024] Owl: people are on edge, assume that he fell overboard, keep working

[10:12 AM, 10/19/2024] Owl: few sailors are so sick theyve collapsed, Clemens is suspecting something is like, SUPER wrong.

[10:12 AM, 10/19/2024] Owl: if he has a Watson esque sidekick (maybe picked young sailor to be his assistant) he has to tell him "look if captain hears me he might throw me overboard but I'm like 80% sure he fed a crew member to his grandson"

[10:13 AM, 10/19/2024] Owl: and it sounds insane, but i want him to use his science and logic schtick to lead him to the source of the disaster befalling the ship

[10:13 AM, 10/19/2024] Owl: how does dracula factor in? honestly idk - maybe he turned toby into a vamp for kicks after the kid was sneaking into the cargo hold to mess around

[10:13 AM, 10/19/2024] Owl: anyway thats it thats my pitch, thank you for coming to me TED talk

[10:26 AM, 10/19/2024] Owl: i almost sent a text yeasterday saying a new horror game, mouthwashing, wasn't that scary ( watched whole lets play yesterday) but the game was enough to give me a night of very anxious dreams so I retract my retracted statement

[plebeiangoth]

Have some Halloween movies in no particular order

The Lost Skeleton of Cadavra is a great time, if you can find it. It's a love letter to so-bad-it's-good horror movies from the 50's and 60's which were all ambition and no talent e.g. Plan 9 from Outer Space and Manos The Hands of Fate. One of the funniest and most quotable movies I've ever seen!

House is as gorgeous as it is spooky and goofy! If you've not seen it, you're missing out. It's made by a director who made advertisements and a lot of the special effects are what would have been common in Japanese ads at the time.

Martyrs goes on the list for that one asshole who needs something extreme. Not that it's a bad movie, of course. But if you're that asshole and have yet to see it, have fun! If you don't know what I'm talking about, this film is not for the faint of heart and I mean it! Look up "French extremism" if you're curious. Again, if you've not seen it and don't like lots of blood and gore and little left to the imagination, this is absolutely not for you.

Valerie and her Week of Wonders is a gorgeous example of Czech new-wave, about a girl becoming a woman in a village of vampires! Strongly recommend this one if you like House, it's super colorful and whimsical!

Tetsuo the Iron Man is my idea of a more fun kind of extreme film. This is one of those movies I've seen several times and can't seem to remember the story, but suffice to say it's a wild ride about a metal fetishist who becomes sort of a metal monster in a similar fashion to Tetsuo in Akira becoming a giant flesh monster. It's got a very goofy tone and is shockingly wet for a movie about rebar.

The Thing is never not fun. I'm sorry to say I don't know my Carpenter as well as I should, I'm just too stuck on how much I love The thing and may never move forward. Yes I've seen Halloween, just I like The Thing better.

The Devils is a movie you can't watch in your home in a legal capacity, Warner Bros is never releasing this one on home video. Rest assured you can find it. It's a Ken Russell film about a whole convent of nuns (the Mother Superior played by Vanessa Redgrave) are so in lust with this priest, played by Oliver Reed, that they all fein demon possession to evade persecution. The complete version of the movie includes a scene in which all the nuns bang a crucifix. It's one of those movies I say the production team went to "the cool face store", because wow there's a lot of cool looking faces!

The Rocky Horror Picture Show, because there will always be virgins

Young Frankenstein was Mel Brooks's only funny movie. Fight me! (men in tights was okay i guess)

Bram Stoker's Dracula. What more need I say?

I can't easily pick any one Jan Svankmajer film, so this is the Svankmajer portion of the list. For the uninitiated, he was a Czech stop-motion animator who made these hyper realistic claymation films, often with a dark context. My favorite feature length films of his are Alice (a telling of Alice in Wonderland), Faust, and Otesanek (his final film and magnum opus, aka Little Otik aka Greedy Guts, based on the fairy tale Otesanek about tree-root baby turned vore-monster). His films aren't necessarily scary, just very unsettling and disturbing.

Hellraiser 2 because I haven't seen it yet and people keep telling me it's the good one, as if the first one wasn't delightfully generous????

The Witches is a movie that upset my very Christian grandmother one time when I was a kid, watching it on TV at her house. I don't think she understood the point that the witches aren't the good guys. I know it's irrelevant, I just thought it was funny. I miss you, Nana.

The Worst Witch. Can someone tell me where to watch this? I never saw it before and I wanna see some tacky Tim Curry schlock

eXistenZ is a movie which I only saw for the first, second, third, and fourth time ever one week last year and I'm ashamed as a Cronenberg fan that it took me so long! Not necessarily his most Halloween-y movie (I'd argue that would be The Fly), it's just a lot of fun.

Think I'll stop there, that's a good sized list.

Add your own recs! What do you watch this time of year?

[yellowloid]

7, 8, 41 and 48 for the fic questions? 🥰

7. Any worldbuilding you’re particularly proud of?

has to be the one i did for my 'satin and lace' series! i just love the backstory of their relationship, love the whole trip to france (amy my beloved <3 the universe hating alex my beloved <3) , love every little moment they spent falling in love in the french countryside as young puppies and then reliving all that once they came back, grown and ready to take the next step... and then the flashbacks to their wedding, and the honeymoon... ugh. i love researching for my fics and i just had so much fun doing it for this series, especially the 'geographic' aspect of their idyllic french summer and then their dream italian honeymoon. ugh i'm just so proud of this whole series and i love it so much </3

8. What song would make a great fic (to either write or read)?

so many possibilities!! i think i've already said this in the past but i would absolutely LOVE to read/write a fic about the aviation/eycte/miracle aligner trilogy - i think that's pretty self-explanatory in and of itself jshfhsf. it has so much fucking potential and i'd write it myself but it'd be such a huge project and it'd mean so much i'd go insane trying to make it as perfect as possible and unfortunately i don't have time for that djfhshfhs but who knows, maybe one day

also bonus answers: dracula teeth because vampires (duh), sculptures because it'd make a great thriller, the bakery because of wholesome meet-cutes and coming-of-age vibes, the jeweller's hands because mysterious and crazy gay sex aura

41. Link a fic that made you think, “Wow, I want to write like that.”

aaaaaa that's such a difficult question... i think in this fandom we truly don't realise how lucky we are when it comes to fanfics - because trust me, i've read a lot of fics in oh-so-many different fandoms over the years and although i've read a lot of great ones... the moment i joined the milex fandom it was all over jshfdgf a while ago i tried reading something (*smut, but that's only relatively relevant) in another fandom, from an author i used to trust even - and trust me when i say i had to close the tab so fast because it was... meh. it was just not passing the vibe check. it wasn't even *that* bad, it was just... idk. there's a lot of great stuff out there but once you read about milex there's no way out and definitely no way back sjfhdfdxhg

however, in our little tumblr corner we have SO MANY different writers who are just so extremely talented it's honestly crazy. everyone has their own personal - and very identifiable - way of writing about those two silly idiots in love, and everyone writes slightly different versions of them, and all those little details come together to make every fic so special. i could recognise something written by a specific author rathen than another just by looking at their writing style and way of characterising alex and miles, as well as their dynamic with each other. and i think that's so beautiful and special and ugh <3 i really really love this fandom and all the talented people that are part of it. y'all are amazing <3

now to answer the question, there's just so many outstanding fics out there... but if i really had to choose just one, i'd go with 'Miracle Aligner' by WeirdChick333. that fic took me on a journey and literally changed my brain chemistry in the process; it's just so insanely good it blows my mind over and over again even just thinking about it. left me speechless when i first read it and keeps leaving me speechless every time i think back to it. absolute fucking masterpiece.

48. What’s the last fic you read? Do you recommend it?

'going back to 505' by my lovely bestie @alexturne that i still need to leave a proper comment on bc i'm bad at being the ao3 equivalent of a tumblrina but just know i loved it very much and she always delivers the most wholesome fluffiest fluff xx

thank you so much for the questions, this was really fun 💖

[ninjathrowingstork]

PART 2, BUG-CHOMPIN TIME.

There's the familiar grimace-grin there

Van Helsing, please stop berating the mentally ill man. Don't antagonize the best source of information you have by condescending to and patronizing him and making him more upset and alone.

Idk I'd have gotten him some comfortable clothes instead of the trousers and shirt he's been in, tried to find some actual therapies to help with whatever Dracula did to drive him to this state, and maybe listening to the guy trying to warn y'all there's a vampire around?

Poor dude but why are you sitting like that?

Dracula senses have been activated

Listen, this guy is a mentally unstable. He's few cards short of a deck. He's coocoo for cocoa puffs. If he's scared out of his mind and still trying to warn you about something that's leaving very real evidence I'd take what he's saying more seriously.

"I didn't tell them anything!"

New reaction image unlocked

"God will not damn a lunatic's soul." Listen this guy's had his mind snapped with the stuff he's seen Dracula do and the fear of what he's been ordered to do, making threats that he'll be damned if he dies with blood on his hands isn't gonna help calm or stabilize him to get any rational answers that could, you know, help catch the real monster.

"I can not die with all these deaths on my conscience" Ugh he's so doomed by the narrative. Renfield was alone literally for the entire movie, even in the hospital after he'd been broken by Dracula he's isolated and ignored when he's trying to warn people, when he'd gone through the whole trip from the castle seeing the people around him being picked off on the ship and not being able to say anything because it would mean his own life also and who would believe him? I'm not a psychologist so I don't know the working for what ongoing traumatic stress and literally being scared out of his mind and imitating that source (eating bugs for life, and birds and would have eaten a kitten if he could like Dracula feeds on people) is called, but wow looking at 1931 writing for yeah a horror film based on a Victorian novel but we were just having the rough knowledge of treating shell-shock post wwi and yeah ofc that's not getting applied to the madman sacrificed for the narrative, who's the Poor Wretch Killed By The Monster for the young lovers to have their happy ending, and given Jonathan's job in the beginning so the actual Jonathan wouldn't have to look weak or mad (but he had far more screen time or an actual character). 10/10 I want to put Dwight Frye's Renfield in my pocket and bring him home with me, and give him pajamas and some mealworms and actual food bc I love his just being a Little Guy.

Alright, I finally watched the 1931 Dracula, and

Omg look at him. He's -

He's just-

He's just a little guy. (and this version inexplicably have French subtitles)

Oh hey it's the bug box!

Gotta love how well these shots were recreated!

"Blood is the source of life", for non Francophones

Pictures taken right before disaster

Right after Renfield passes out when the Dracula-bat flies at him and the Brides approach his unconscious body. Drac T-Rex walks at him after chasing them off, and presumably all this and any offscreen stuff is enough to break his will (we don't see him with the tie after this so I'm imagining that was involved somehow). The recreation of the Dwight Frye suit is gorgeous in Renfield, and how it's super patched together showing he's had the same suit for 90 years. (Pt. 1)

[basilhearsanoise]

pleaseee elaborate on your homophobic sam take. it’s very compelling. i always thought sam’s early plotline with the demon blood was a queer allegory, but your explanation for his attitude towards dean’s bisexuality makes a lot of sense now that i think about it

WOW I'M A REAL SUPERNATURAL BLOG NOW YOU CAN'T UNDERSTAND HOW MUCH THIS MADE MY DAY I WILL ABSOLUTELY ELABORATE THANK YOU

there are So Many Layers i probably won't even be able to get them all down but here's some major ones. from the get-go, sam is The Opposite of dean on so many issues, and essentially throughout the show they flip. this is most notably demonstrated by the fact that sam starts out as a Devout Christian (or at least we are to assume that he is christian given his approach to prayer, god, angels, etc) and by the end of the show sam is completely and utterly devoid of faith. whereas dean is like If There's A God In Heaven, What's He Waiting For? - Elton John.mp3 in the beginning of the show, and by the end he's like "i have faith in humanity, in spirituality, in CASTIEL, in MY SON JACK," by the end. but this is just one of the MANY issues they flip back and forth on, or just slowly and surely change their perspectives to be more like the way the other brother started.

1. should we tell people there are monsters? dean says "we can't tell anyone they exist the whole world will panic" vs. sam says "they have a RIGHT TO KNOW WHAT'S OUT THERE"

but also. are all monsters evil? dean says "yes, they kill innocent people and they killed my mother and destroyed my life, they ALL deserve to die" but sam says "SOME of them must be good....it's not THEIR FAULT they're disgusting, evil and eat people uwu"

monsters/cryptids/spirits/folklore etc have virtually always been, in some way shape or form, a queer allegory themselves. the shapeshifter arc spoke to me as a trans person on a deep personal level. dracula was essentially racist propaganda. so if we take this allegory to supernatural, and say, "acceptance of monsters = acceptance of queerness" dean's hatred of them is a hatred of himself, his own inner monster, his own internalized homophobia - in addition to the fact that because he IS a queer man who has been VICTIM to REAL VIOLENT homophobia before, it would make sense that he is #antifa #acab #kill all the nazis forever #don't waste time trying to make monsters good when you could save good people from them instead. which is like. a reasonable response to have to a group of people that systematically try to kill you. but that also makes sam's "oh pity the monster dean, don't kill it, FORGIVE, JUST GIVE THEM A CHANCE TO ~ REPENT ~ THEIR SINS" ....like, even in later seasons he is saying stuff like this, and while it's true that dean SHOULD forgive some of the monsters that sam says this about, it still reads to me as two major red flags of 1. forgive your abusers to be the better person and 2. "hate the sin, not the sinner" rhetoric. sam doesn't actually give a shit about any of these monsters he gives a shit about keeping his own ideological purity. he sounds like scary youth pastors i had as a child.

this is further demonstrated by the fact that as dean becomes more accepting of his sexuality as the show goes on, he becomes more accepting of monsters. that's benny's ENTIRE EXISTENCE AS A CHARACTER: "i accept this vampire because he is honorable, and manly, and looks really fuckin cute in suspenders." that's also why sam hates benny so much even though he's the one who's been like "but monsters can be good T__T" this whole time. what the fuck other reason would he have to hate benny so much?

this is also CLEARLY the ENTIRE subtext of the Demon Dean arc - Sam FLIPS OUT about him going off with crowley because he could FORGIVE one little crush on an angel, because of the fact that he's an angel, and also because dean wasn't "shoving his unholy lifestyle down everyone's throats" but demon dean is....loudly, angrily, gay. demon dean is a manifestation of all the gayness that dean has suppressed his whole life and now he's "too indecent" for sam. this is FURTHER demonstrated by the fact that crowley literally yells at dean to "pick a side" after demon dean sides with the slighted wife in a demon deal instead of the cheating husband, literally because of the fact that the husband says "men are just supposed to sleep around" and dean gets so mad about this sexism that he kills him.

this is dean not only rejecting sexism more than sam literally ever actually does in the show (everything he says about it reads to me as idle posturing Fake Woke Shit whereas dean is a sleazebag, but he's an Equal Opportunity sleazebag) but also his rejection of being pigeonholed as gay when he is, indeed, bisexual. crowley represents the biphobia that gay people enact on bi people, sam represents the homophobia that straight people enact on all queer people.

this brings me to the next part of sam's Not Niceness - he's like, actually 100% more misogynistic than dean is. i know i'm Not A Woman but like i am trans, queer, and not dumb. sam is a fucking sadist serial killer man who treats women like garbage the SECOND they are no longer useful to him, this is most clearly demonstrated when he doesn't have a "soul" but it existed in him basically from the get-go, he is painted as the "more emotionally mature one" but that reading became so inaccurate the show literally started making fun of his character for thinking that sappy fake shit could pass as sincere care for another human being. dean actually talks to women like they're people with feelings. he routinely identifies with the victims and is paralleled against them, especially if they are victims of childhood sexual assault. sam does not talk to women unless they serve some kind of purpose to his goals and is much more routinely depicted weirdly enjoying killing enemies that are women. sometimes not even for plot reasons, it's just weird shots that nobody thought to red flag because this show is. A MESS.

anyway. another example is the one that i mentioned in the post about the confederate soldier, the fact that sam is fucking racist and dean is at least, within the narrative, less racist.

ANYWAY, THERE'S STILL MORE I COULD TALK ABOUT BUT I'LL LEAVE IT AT THIS: sam is constantly telling dean that he's not being sensitive or poltically correct but every single time it comes off sounding like a straight person telling an actual gay person how not to be homophobic. like, please, sammy, touch grass. dean says: touch grass, kill nazis.

[28dayslater]

now that YOU have seen morbius, what do you think their reviews would be?

thank you hev it's true that i am in fact one of the six to seven people worldwide who have seen morbius! having consulted the sacred texts to find out who went my thoughts are thus (l-r):

foden: didn't get it, kept asking questions about whether morbius was dracula, enjoyed all the terrible fight scenes nonetheless. kept laughing whenever morbius drank blood in that same incredibly stupid way which set jack off and threatened to wake up hendo

grealish: "could that actually happen? like, if someone drank bat blood, could they get those powers?" no, jack, they couldn't "oh :("

kyle w-p: got extremely into it and genuinely shed a tear when matt smith betrayed jared leto and stole his secret vampire serum. the only thing missing in his eyes was a heart wrenching epic romance between morbius and Woman Character. well maybe in morbius 2

ollie watkins: thought he was going to see a regular mcu movie and was a bit upset when iron man and co didn't show up to save the day. tried his best to get into it but didn't really care in the end

conor coady: "so what you saying, he's a superhero is he? bat powers? wow, that's cool. looks great, everyone must have worked hard on it. that jared leto, he's a strange fella isn't he" etc etc etc

hendo: aggressively shushed everyone for the first five minutes then fell asleep in his seat and snored extremely loudly. woke up for the last few minutes and complained that it didn't make sense

luke shaw: hooting and hollering like a yank at the opening night of avengers 7 the ballad of loki's cave, could not if pressed describe the plot or name any of the characters, just happy to be there

mount: was eerily silent the whole time and didn't react to anything on screen except when the mouse morbius was testing the vampire serum on died. and then he laughed, just once.

i think this is marc guehi?: he was texting through it. looked up at the screen whenever there was a loud noise. not interested pal. he wanted to see the batman and morbius simply would not do

conor gallagher: took advantage of hendo being asleep to work his way through a giant overpriced bag of maltesers. repeatedly and loudly pointed out the stupid parts of the plot, upsetting kyle. he did think the vampire face effect looked cool tho

bonus round: who stayed for the stupid post credits scene?

kyle: would have stayed all day if the cinema staff hadn't had to come in and clear up the popcorn phil and jack spilt everywhere. ah, the magic of the cinema! headed straight to ao3 afterwards to look for Morbius x Woman fic (there are apparently three!)

ollie: was waiting to see if a mcu character he recognised showed up (they didn't)

coady: was just enjoying the comfortable chair to be quite honest

luke shaw: cheered when the random guy showed up to say "hey doctor morbius let's team up" despite having no clue who it was

gallagher: still had a few maltesers left to finish

in conclusion: it's morbin' time!

[venteamocha]

Hello! Sometimes I see you post stuff from IF blogs and I've recently started playing some IF games, which I've enjoyed so far. Do you have any IF stories you'd recommend in particular? I'm not attached to any particular genre and I don't need romance or a self-insert main character, (though I'm not opposed to either). Though, it's a definite plus if it's LGBTQ+ inclusive! I'm not really sure what the "cornerstones" are of IF so I'll take any and all recommendations haha

Oh god, I play so many IFs. So many. And it’s not even close to all of them, but I’m trying!!

Tbh IFs without romance seems to be very rare, I think because when I think IF I think Choice of Games, and those pretty much always have romance in them. At least, the most well known ones do. But a well done one without romance would be nice too!

Okay, this is a list of my favourites! They’re all LGBT+ inclusive, and most have gender selectable love interests, or at least ones that change gender depending on the gender and sexuality combination you pick. In no particular order, of course.  Behind a cut because I’m gonna give them each a mini review. Because I haven’t done that yet.

(There are so many.)

Mind Blind: I absolutely love our big brother Nick, I love how witty and sharp so much of the dialogue is, I love how the MC clearly has a rather large handicap, but is still such an important person to so many people and not looked down on in the slightest. And when they are, we all know it’s because that person is a jerk! They’re not defined by what they aren’t, but what they are, and that’s a great message.

Shepherds of Haven: Part of why I love this one so much is I just love fantasy settings and this one just pulls it off so well. The cast is full of amazing characters, and I gotta say I die inside pretty regularly for not being able to afford the patreon content, lol. The author puts so much amazing stuff on there, and gives us so much great content in the game and through answers on tumblr, and you can tell this whole thing is just the best thing ever to them, and that makes it the best ever for us readers too!

The Wayhaven Chronicles: I’d be shot if I didn’t mention this one, the series that literally killed dashingdon when the book 3 demo dropped!! Again, another author that cares a lot and does their best to do right by their fans. We’ve been given drip after drip of these amazing characters backstories, and I just cannot wait for more! It’s definitely very romance centered, but the overall plotlines are also very good, and I have to say that no matter who I romance, I just feel like the group as a whole is a family. And that’s wonderful.

Speaker: I really like the lore. I really like the lore. I can’t wait until we get more of the overall plotline. Mostly I want my Speaker to get in deep trouble so Seb, Li and Seer (best sister ever) go off and beat the shit out of whatever is causing it. This probably says something about me, but what can I say, I thrive on angst and inflicting near death injuries on my OCs. Sometimes I even kill them, although all of this is offtopic. Or is it? I guess we’ll find out, although I doubt we’ll actually be able to kill off Speaker. And yes, I am definitely playing the Seb & Li poly route. I love them both so much. 

Wilhelmina: I love vampires, ok? Ok? And this one is based off Dracula!! The OG!! And you can choose Drac’s gender!! Shit, sign me up forever!! Yeah, she might be literally killing my bff, torturing my fiancé and low key fucking with my mind, but vampires are hot!! Let me live! Or not. But yeah, this is a really well done retelling of the Dracula novel and I like how well it works as an IF. Did I mention I like vampires?? Especially when they get all monstery?? (This one has an MC with a set gender, as it’s based on an already existing literary figure. Mina can have a same sex relationship with dracula, if you make drac a female, or with Lucy, a female love interest.)

More Things in Heaven and Earth: Hi Nell!! First off, I gotta uncover a deep shame of mine. My family literally has a Shakespeare heirloom collection. As in, my greatgrandfather passed down through the family a collection of Shakespeare that was published in 1911. In ye olde englishe. I tried to read it when I was like 10 and was like what language is this?? What the fuck? What the fuck??? And ended up reading As You Like It, a bit of Romeo and Juliet, and a little of Hamlet. Didn’t touch the rest of it. I only got into the other stories through trashy ya reimaginings. That said, this retelling of Hamlet inspired me to go read the whole of the original and now I have a lot of fears for these characters that I’m so much more attached to, oh god I hope my Ophelia has a happy ending. I hope Hamlet himself has a happy ending. The dialogue is so well done, everyone is engaging, and yeah it made me finish an old af book when nothing else did. (This one also has an MC with a set gender, female, for the same reason. However, there are two gender variable love interests, so you can very much play a bi or gay Ophelia if you so choose.)

Guenevere: I love King Arthur. All the myths. I have so many books based on the King Arthur mythos, oh dear god. I love pretty much every version of it. All the movie and tv shows too! I just can’t get enough of those knights. I could go on for paragraphs about how courtly love worked and how all the different social castes were, but I’ll try not to. This series lets you customize Guen as a character to an amazing degree, considering that she’s also based on an actual literary figure like the other two I mentioned above. It really feels like she becomes your own character, and yet she still exists within this world very very well. I worry quite a bit that the author might have bit off more than they can chew with the current book they’re working on, what I’ve seen of it looks absolutely massive in scale. What is out so far is a wonderful read though, full of drama and laughter and lots of chances to make the story your own.

Bastard of Camelot: Yep! Another King Arthur series! Sue me! This one lets you set Mordred’s gender though, so it’s more inclusive in that way. It is very interesting to play as one of the “bad guys” of the King Arthur mythos. You can play them as straight up evil, as good, or you know, a bit of column a and a bit of column b. Or they can just be a rude little shit. It’s got dragons too! You get a dragon pet! Dragons are cool. It can be a bit tough to play sometimes, since a lot of people dislike Mordred quite a lot because of prejudices. Hopefully this will change a bit later in the series if you’ve been a fairly good person up to that point. Gotta say though, as a warning, that Mordred is a product of incest. It’s not glossed over, and it does cause a lot of problems for them in the story.

God of the Red Mountain: I just love that this inspired me to read more chinese mythology tbh. There is just so much here! And it’s just such a good read. I wish I was better at describing things. The MC being a spirit that you can define, the whole setting, most of the love interests also being spirits, the massive amount of history and culture and lore, how it all fits together. It is such a well done story. I really wish it got more attention than it does. I still miss Big Sister. I still can’t wait to find out more about the foxes, and how we can heal our MC.

The Nameless: Another one that lets you play as something otherworldly. I love the lore behind this one, and I love all of the cast I’ve met. I kind of like that our MC isn’t loved right off the bat, that we’ll have to win over all of our love interests and even the other npcs. I’m up for the challenge! Everything I’ve read on the tumblr for these characters just makes me love them all more tbh. I love how much they’ve written for all of them! Most of all though, I love Oisein. All the art of them is just *chef kiss* and their personality is magical.

A Mage Reborn: This is a really recent one but!! Wow, it’s really well done! That cliffhanger!! Oof!! Not many books literally start with killing your MC off! That takes guts! I told the author this already, but I love the way they formatted this, the way it starts with the end, so to speak, and then fills it all out. It just made everything feel so poignant, how MC is literally looking back at all these moments in time in the last minutes they have before they die. Shit. That’s powerful. And there’s gonna be more??? Can’t wait for that angst. Give me that drama. Of course I picked the one who had me killed, that’s just how I am!

These are all just the COG type games, there are a few twine games with graphics I’d throw on here, but the list is long enough as it is and they feel like they’re in a different category to me. Maybe it’s just me?

[emily-the-fae]

Sound of a Heartbeat

Part 6. The Devil's Hospitality

Part 1 - Part 2 - Part 3 - Part 4 - Part 5

And I am back from celebrating the summer solstice. Mosquitoe-bitten, red-haired and with a new chapter. Thanks for following the story if you still are, I'm very sorry that editing takes me so long. (STILL IN NEED OF A BETA). So yes, please enjoy and like&reblog&comment, because interaction with readers makes me extremely happy. Also please write in comments if you want me to tag you so that you don't miss the new parts.

Pairing: Dracula x OC

Warnings: none, a little bit of death threats and the usual tuberculosis part

"Maps used to say there'd be dragons here. Now they don't, but that doesn't mean dragons aren't there." ~ Lorne Malvo, "Fargo"

Shari began to open her eyes hesitantly, slowly when nothing rushed at her in the first few moments of her presence inside the castle. The healer was still extremely tense, ready to jump aside and try to fight off anything that tried to attack her. Nothing. Dark, still, terrifying, but also quiet and…empty. Lisa hadn’t told her a complete lie. Apparently, Dracula wasn’t home. Shari looked around the dark place she found herself in - she was standing in the middle of an enormous hall, columns going way up, she needed to raise her head to see the gothic arcs of the dark ceiling above her; two large round marble staircases in front of her led to the opening on the second floor and behind that space she could see a darkened entrance to an inner corridor. Shari could hear nothing but her own heartbeat and Rodo's husky breathing, the silence was almost ideal, her own quiet breathing echoed around the wide halls - the castle appeared to be completely empty, apart from her, Rodo and her ghastly companion. Lisa seemed frozen in awe for a while, looking around too, but with a kind of familiar melancholic look on her face - staring once again at the place she had spent so much time in must have felt odd. Odd and slightly painful. All the memories of her life, all the “what if”s of her never leaving this peculiar home or never finding it in the first place rushed in, frustrating her for a few moments. The ghost quickly recalled she needed to keep collected – for the sake of her new guest and the adventure she was planning ahead.

- Wait, Lisa! - Shari rushed to her side, afraid to be left alone even for one moment. Rodo hopped behind her easily. - We will go and grab books, yeah I get it, but... How do I... Where do I rest? I mean I need a bed and preferably next to a chimney and then after I wake up, I can study through whatever we need and search for whatever other materials I can need, sure, but I'd there... I mean it's kind of a vampire castle... - Shari trailed off and in a moment she was coughing again, heading to the supposed library entrance, but barely seeing her way.

- Wait, Lisa! - Shari rushed to her side, afraid to be left alone even for one moment. Rodo hopped behind her easily. - We will go and grab books, yeah I get it, but... How do I... Where do I rest? I mean I need a bed and preferably next to a chimney and then after I wake up, I can study through whatever we need and search for whatever other materials I can need, sure, but I'd there... I mean it's kind of a vampire castle... - Shari trailed off and in a moment she was coughing again, heading to the supposed library entrance, but barely seeing her way.

- That is quite funny of you, - Lisa responded, when Shari quieted down a bit. - To be asking me if you can have a normal bedroom in a vampire castle, especially since you know I've lived here for quite a long time.

- Yeah and married the host, - Shari argued breathlessly.

- What do you think vampires sleep in?

- Coffins?

- Don't be shallow.

- Well, sorry if didn't live with them for twenty years and didn't realise they may as well use beds... - Shari hesitated. - They do, right? Because if you were implying that you want me to sleep in your old room, then thanks I'd better sleep on library floor.

- You'll take one of the guestrooms, - Lisa rolled her eyes. - And you have to get there soon, otherwise you'll collapse and I am in no form to drag you up the stairs.

- Oh, you've finally noticed, - Shari huffed. - I hope there will be a very - no, extremely - warm chimney, - she added, shivering.

- As you wish, - answered the ghost, pushing the heavy door. They walked into the library together, careful not to make any noise and Shari had to catch her breath: of course she had expected something like this, but neither the size of the room nor the abundance of different apparatuses and strange objects could have ever been embraced by her imagination - it seemed like one lifetime would never be enough to study through all the centuries of knowledge kept in these walls.

- Wow.

- Well, that… is one way to place it, - Lisa laughed, amused with the healer's surprise. - Come, - she beckoned. - Take this, this... oh, and this, - she walked to one of the tall shelves, pointing to several books for Shari to take. - Oh, wait, I forgot, can you...?

- Read? You ask only now? You offend me, - Shari threw the ghost an unamused glare, her hands loaded with heavy foliants. Lisa laughed, obviously the question was only poorly hidden sarcasm. Rodo behind her back was running around the room, smelling the air with curiosity - if he ever visited the castle before, she doubted that he was let anywhere near the living areas.

- Well, you never know with people these days, - Lisa replied. - These must have something on your lung disease, as far as I remember - or some similar things - you'll need to go through lung sections, compare the symptoms and check what might work for you.

- Will try to, - the girl nodded, weighting the books in her arms and already estimating how much time she may possibly have for all that study.

- Come on now, don't waste time, - Lisa was too enthusiastic to be a ghost inside of an abandoned vampire castle. Far too enthusiastic. Something must have been off, but Shari couldn’t place what and couldn’t possibly be able to do so in her exhausted state.

Shari followed her down another large door and out of the library; there was a narrow staircase leading somewhere upstairs, dark and empty, just like the rest of the place – the golden lights of the library couldn’t reach into its curves, so Shari had to watch her step carefully. She was not sure how many floors they passed before they finally left the stairs and turned into a dark corridor lit only by the moonlight, falling from a small window way in front of them. Shari felt cold and slightly anxious for no evident reason - the whole place had an intense, intimidating mood to it – as expected. Lisa made a few more steps and stopped in front of a heavy wooden door. Shari hesitated once more, but Lisa nodded towards it encouragingly; the girl then freed one of her hands from underneath the books and pushed the door open, stepping into the room more confidently.

A big four-poster bed, a fireplace, a wardrobe and a table with a chair placed by the window. Old, slightly dusty, but more than enough for her to rest her head. Shari threw the books on the table and lit the fire in no time, sinking down on her knees to warm her freezing fingers. After several days of survival and freezing, she could finally heat and rest. Rodo crawled to the corner of the room and lay down there calmly, hiding his clawed paws beneath himself and seemingly beginning to drift off, Lisa stood by the window, facing away, staring into the darkness, seemingly already detached from what was happening within the walls of the castle. The door was locked - pointlessly, as a bow to paranoia - the fire was burning nicely - how good it was to finally feel its warmth - the room was silent apart from its creaking and Shari knew she herself was starting to fall asleep.

She stood up from her place by the chimney, checked the door once more and threw herself on the bed, kicking off her boots and crawling under the heavy blankets. Now she wanted nothing more than sleep - sleep and warmth of the chimney to ease her cold, the soreness of her limbs and the pain in her lungs. Lisa slowly dissolved in the corner of the room, but even that didn't seem to be a problem to the healer - she would catch up with the ghost tomorrow, get to her reading and preferably medicine. Now - rest.

Shari rolled into a ball under the covers and surrendered to the long awaited sleep.

***

Dracula was returning to his home after two days of absence; following his son proved counterproductive - apart from assuring, that the boy didn't have it easy with the demons, there was not much more he could do. The group held together, never separated - not after they became three instead of four. That was almost a pitiful chain of events. Though it did make them less vulnerable to his attacks and he decided not to rush things - the speed at which they traveled bought him more than enough time for any further proceedings.

The world outside was crushed and burned by war. The world inside his castle was dark and hollow as usual. At least it was so normally - but surprisingly, not that night.

Dracula knew there was an intruder in his castle the moment he entered – there was no way he wouldn’t have noticed; the vampire had to stop on his tracks, trying to detect what caught him off guard, and then he finally felt it - the smell of the human was very subtle, but still there. He tracked her down(undeniably this one was a female, he could almost recognize that mix of cinnamon and lavender as if he had encountered it before) - from the main entrance to the library - pausing by the shelves for a moment, a few foliants were missing here and there with the traces of her human warmth still hovering around the place - and upstairs to one of the rooms - just like the guestroom Lisa stayed at when she first found him.

The door was expectably locked, but as soon as the vampire's nail trailed along the keyhole, the lock clicked by itself, opening up. Dracula expected a lost and tired stranger or a hopeful witch seeking out his help and teaching, but when he opened the door, letting himself inside, he finally understood why her smell seemed so familiar to him. The girl from the forest camp, his son's willing helper, witch and healer by her own words. The vampire was surprised to say the least. He had been quite sure she was gone for good; in the end he had tried his best to give her a peaceful death and yet here she was: alive, breathing and in his castle. Sleeping peacefully, having willingly crawled under his roof and left herself at his mercy.

The vampire entered the room quietly, shutting the door behind him and sitting down in the chair by the table, his eyes observing the human figure on the bed. Petite, blond haired and pale - the girl looked so similar to Lisa, but yet was nothing like her - no, the darker tint to her hair and the weakness of her tired body drew the distinction quite clearly, as well as the reddish mark standing out against her pale neck. A mark he left on her.

He briefly wondered how that weak creature managed to survive his bite, but he would set the question aside for the time being. He needed to decide what to do with his guest: the easiest option was to finally enjoy the remnants of her sweet living blood without interruption now, but one look at the pale sleeping form made him suddenly feel doubtful: her chest heaving as she breathed, her heartbeat slow and peaceful, she coughed in her sleep dryly and turned on her back, her arms spread across the bed, she faced away from him with the crook of her neck so temptingly open to his view - so calm and vulnerable. How are you still alive? Dracula suddenly for himself felt rather than decided that he would not end her, not yet and not here, that he wanted to know more: how she found him, what she wanted and what may come of her - after all, he hadn't had such bold human visitors, ever since...

***

Dim light was shining through the window, strands of it falling onto her face and disturbing her peaceful sleep. Shari moved about a bit, wincing at the pain in her limbs and the full ache somewhere deep in her chest, letting a few (thankfully) dry coughs pass her lips, trying to hide away from the morning rays, hoping for a few more minutes of the blissful unconsciousness, then finally stilled, opening her sleepy eyes and sitting up. The instant she did so, she knew something was very wrong: the room was identical to how it looked the evening before, but she felt it still – even the air seemed denser, more dangerous and alert. She felt a shiver run down her back – as she finally noticed it, on the wall before her, next to the door, she could see a large dark shadow of something standing in front of the window, cutting off the light. Please let it be something outside. Shari turned her head slightly to the left and saw Rodo crouched on the ground - worried and tense, looking in the direction of something behind her back; the healer suddenly had absolutely no wish to turn around. Maybe if she would stay still the thing - whatever it was - would go away and leave her alone.

The sound of movement behind her back announced her that her stillness would most probably not protect her - whatever it was, it was inside of the room and very much uncaring of whether she moved or not.

- I think I have already killed you once this week, - Shari jumped on the spot and turned abruptly to finally face her host: Dracula was leaning against the table and staring down at her, his sharp face unreadable. - You are quite persistent for a human, I dare say. And bold.

Shari leaped out of the bed, as if a bucket of ice cold water was spilled over her, and backed away from him until her back hit the stone wall, her eyes searching for Lisa frantically – but the ghost was nowhere to be seen. Not this again. The vampire crossed the room in a swift, undetectable motion, his figure appearing in front of her in a matter of seconds. Rodo growled at his master, but remained motionless, still afraid to step out against the vampire.

Shari tried to move away, slip out of his grasp before he could properly get ahold of her, possibly even reach the door and run down the stairs - anything - but a large clawed hand grabbed her throat suddenly and firmly and the healer found herself unable to breathe properly, gasping and coughing in his hold, trying to wriggle away. Where was Lisa when she was so needed? "Oh no, Dracula is rarely visiting this castle nowadays!" Sure, like there was ever any point in believing that.

- How did you find this place? - Dracula growled rather than asked. His grasp was tight and Shari felt panic rise inside as if she was already in the claws of Death itself. Not far from truth.

"Your dead wife dragged me all the way here."

- Rumours. Mostly. And a bit of luck, - she rasped, out of breath.

- What do you want?

"Out."

- Shelter. And knowledge. I know there are books here that can help me heal, - she coughed and tried to free herself, once again unsuccessfully.

- And you expected the castle to be empty? - he almost laughed.

"No, but your beloved wife is a big liar."

- I recognize it was incredibly stupid of me, but back then it seemed like a plan, - oh yes, a plan of a very annoying and untrustworthy ghost.

- Are you alone here?

"Apart from a mean ghost and your demon..."

- Yes! - she gritted her teeth, as his hand pressed her farther into the wall.

- Give me one reason, human, not to finish now what I started a few days ago, - he was growling now even deeper, his face close to hers and she wondered how painful it may be this time. She did not want to find out.

- When I'm here I can't help Adrian! - she replied quickly, rasping each word.

- Same as when you are dead, - came the answer, his head leaning down to the crook of her neck. She shrieked.

- Repeating the same action and awaiting a different outcome of it is the definition of insanity, - Shari blurted out, not fully aware of her own words. What the hell was this even about? - You have ready killed me once, remember? I should have died back then, but something kept me going. You killed me and it didn't work. And you are not insane, are you?

Dracula suddenly removed his hand from her throat, laughing and took a small step back - as soon as he did so, she could feel against herself the growling form of Rodo who jumped in front of the human, protecting her from his master. Shari slid to the floor and threw her arms around the creature's neck, holding it to herself and caressing the dark fur. The vampire stared at the demon with a dissatisfied gaze, but the beast held his ground firmly now.

- You are a particularly peculiar human being, healer, - the vampire laughed. - That was the most unsettling answer you could have given.

- Was it? - she rasped, catching her breath. He smirked, knowing well he would not eat her now; he was too amused to make her his meal. - I can leave if you want, I will... - Shari searched for words. What exactly was she going to do if he made her leave? Crouch down on his porch and die?

- You are a curious specimen... Besides it likes you for some reason, - Dracula nodded towards Rodo. - You may stay until you annoy me out of my patience, - he stated blankly, instantly hating how welcoming he was being towards the human.

- Thank you. Making me leave would have been unfortunate and embarrassing to no limit, - Shari spoke quickly with no intonation, calming her rapidly beating heart. That was unexpected, but appreciated and she tried to be as short and non-annoying as possible as to not make him change his mind.

- Rest, use the library, and try to stay out of my line of sight. And remember I could still decide to draw a conclusion to our previous meeting, - he walked out of the guestroom, almost slamming the door behind him. So much for hospitality, but at least she wasn't being kicked out. Or eaten, for that matter.

Shari breathed in deeply and caressed Rodo's head and neck. What has she gotten herself into? Where the hell did Lisa disappear to?

[jay-wells-writes]

Enemy of My Enemy is My Friend (Dracula x reader, smut and slight gore)

OMG..... Wow..... I was expecting this story to be a bit of a pain in the ass, but man was I wrong. Once I got the idea down, everything just came to me. I was surprised with how much I kept putting into this and I really like were it went. So my Dear Anon I hope you really enjoy the story. 

Of course I had to change some things around in order to make your request work and after talking it over with a friend this is what I came up with. SO PLEASE NOTE!!! I have combined both Van Helsing and Castlevania BUT only with one character. I took Brauner from Castlevania and made him the bad guy that makes Reader and Dracula work together. THAT IS THE ONLY THING I TOOK. I also know nothing from Castlevania so I made Brauner how I wanted. So basically I borrowed his name and nothing more. THERE ARE WARNINGS OF BLOOD AND NON DISCRIBED GORE!!!

gif taken from google 

The people in town called you crazy when you mentioned going up to the old Counts Castle. From what you learned at the inn the castle belonged to Count Dracula, a creature of the night that wasn’t to be messed with. But a few years back he left, for unknown reasons and another vampire named Brauner took over. The townspeople are quick to tell you that although Dracula was evil and nasty, he was nothing compared to Brauner. Hearing that you rolled your eyes, in good old Brauner fashion he used his brutality and strength to scare the townspeople into thinking he was something he wasn’t. But as you downed your drink you shook your head and stood. You told them that the anger in you was stronger than Brauner and that if you died you were going to make sure you took him with you. 

When it came to hunting creatures of the night, you were constantly picked on by others. They would tell you that you weren’t strong enough and that you would be better used as bait. But then Tham showed up and instead of picking like the others they taught you what they knew. It was during your training the both of you learned that while you may not have brute strength, you had an unnatural ability when it came to tracking and knowing when you were being followed. So as you walked to the castle you knew something had been following you ever since the sun went down. As you drew closer to the castle you needed to kill whatever it was, because you didn’t need any additional problems once there. Turning around slowly you knew the spot you had chosen was not the best, but the creature needed to be dealt with. Whatever it was, it hadn’t made a sound so you also knew it wasn’t some lackey. That it had some cognitive ability. So you called out to it.

“How about instead of following me you just show yourself!”

Hearing a crack from your left you turned to watch a man walk from behind a large tree. Between his black hair and attire, you didn’t need the moon to see how pale he was. But you couldn’t help it when your breath hitched at his handsome features and you found yourself unable to move, and when he spoke you instantly knew who the man was. 

“But I was having such great fun watching you navigate these woods as if you had lived here your whole life.”

“What makes you think I haven’t?”

Stepping closer to you, your heart began to beat faster and it wasn't out of fear.

“Oh come now, these are my woods, and if a delicious human like you had walked them before I would have snatched you before now.”

You didn’t have to feel breath on the back of your neck to know that he was currently standing behind you, inches away from your neck. Vampires had an ability of being able to control humans so you chalked up your inability to move on that. But you knew and so did he that you weren’t moving because you didn’t want to. Hearing his voice from the other side of your head you turned to look at his pale face as he inched closer to you.

“So tell me, what is a delicious thing, as yourself, doing out this late at night?”

Even though his question shook you like jumping into a cold creek to bathe. It essentially reminded you of why you were making the trip up to the castle. But instead of moving away you remained still and even brought your face a bit closer to his as you answered his question with a small smile. 

“Come now Count, we both know what I am doing.”

You watched as a large smile broke out on the Count’s face. 

“So you know who I am.”

“It wasn’t that hard.”

Smiling at your answer you watched as the Count brought his hand up and ran his cold fingertips down your face.

“You know who I am yet you are unafraid.”

“Not being scared makes you cocky and cocky gets you killed.”

Laughing as he steps back slightly and you watch as the Count stepped away from you completely. Placing his hands behind his back he walked a couple steps in front of you before stopping and looking at you. 

“Well it is still polite to introduce oneself. So allow me to introduce myself, I am Count Vladislaus Dracula.” When you didn’t reply back to the Count he smiled slightly and took a step towards you. “Is it not polite to introduce yourself after someone introduces themselves?”

“It is if the person introducing themselves is alive and not a creature of the night.”

Instantly Dracula was standing behind you and you felt something in you shift. 

“Hmmm, such a feisty thing. I like it, but come now we both have things to do.”

Being reminded of why you were there once again, you felt ice running through your body, but it wasn’t enough to break whatever hold the Count had on you and you found yourself answering his question. 

“My name is y/n.”

“Ah, now see was that so hard? Tell me y/n, why do you make your way up to my castle this late at night?”

Annoyed at the Count for using his abilities to get your name you couldn’t help but say the first thing that came from your mouth. 

“Correct me if I am wrong Count, but doesn’t that castle now belong to Brauner?”

Suddenly you felt the wind leaving your chest as the Count slammed you into a tree. If his face hadn’t been so pale you were sure it would have been bright red in anger as he yelled.

“THAT CASTLE WOULD NEVER BE BRAUNER’S!” Releasing his hold on you the Count took a step back and fixed a piece of his hair that had fallen over his eye. “That is and always will be my castle.”

Suddenly feeling a bit daring you couldn’t help but smile as you rested and tilted your head on the tree.

“But the townspeople said you abandoned it and Brauner took it over.”

Standing flushed against you once again, you allowed Dracula to touch your neck as he slowly moved your head back and forth. 

“I would never abandon something that is mine.”

“But it seems that you have Count.”

You could feel his fingers tightening around your neck as his teeth grazed against your skin. 

“I would NEVER abandon something that is mine and I am ashamed to admit it, but Brauner was able to weaken me. He left me for dead and it has taken this long for me to heal. Now, you may intrigue me but my patients run thin. Why are you heading to my castle?”

"I have come to do you a favor and kill Brauner."

You could feel your blood boil as the Count laughed in your face. To your surprise and his you shoved him away from you and took a step from the tree.  Fixing his jacket the Count stood tall once more and smiled.

"Such anger. Tell me my Dear y/n what has Brauner done to you to cause such anger?”

“He killed my mentor, Tham.”

“Ah, so it is the classic revenge killing.”

Laughing darkly you held out your hand.

“And what about you. You got too comfortable around him and lost your castle and almost your undead li-”

Once again the Count had you slammed into the tree but this time instead of touching you like a lover would his fingers were cutting off your breathing. As you clawed at his hand the Count placed his forehead against yours.

“DO NOT assume that our problems are the same. Human’s die all the time, it is the nature of your life. You are born and then you die. For vampires we live for thousands of years. I AM older than all and most of my kind fear me! Those that don’t learn quickly that they should. Brauner has gotten drunk on power and instead of trying to preserve our kind he has brought us into the light. The ONLY reason he was able to over power me is because he cheated and had young bloods help him in our dual.” Letting go of your throat the Count took a step back and began to pace as you dropped to your knees, gasping for breath. “None of that matters now. Tell me my Dear y/n, how do you plan on killing him? How do you plan on getting into the castle and past those he has around him?”

Shifting to your butt you sat on the ground and thought about it. Truthfully you didn’t know and for some reason you told him so. 

“I don’t know. I was going to scout the castle and look for the best way in. What about you? I highly doubt Brauner is going to allow you back into the castle, even if it is your castle.” 

Placing his hands behind his back the Count tilted his head, acknowledging what you said as he continued to pace. 

“This is true in a sense. Brauner will allow me back in the castle but he will not allow me close to him."

Instead of finishing his thought the Count continued to pace and think. Slowly you got to your feet and began to collect the things you had dropped. You had just picked up your bag when you noticed that the Count was no longer in front of you, but standing flush against your back. 

“Tell me my Dear y/n, what if I told you that tonight not only would Brauner die but you would be able to walk out of my castle alive.”

Turning to look over your shoulder you could see the Count bring his hands up and run them down your shoulders. 

“I would ask you what type of deal am I making with the Devil?”

Laughing, the Count moved to stand in the front of you and took your hands into his. He moved one of them to his shoulder while he gripped your other one into his. Without even realizing it you soon found yourself dancing with the Count in the middle of the woods. 

“The deal, as you call it, my Dear y/n is simple. You become mine.” Before you could pull away the Count shook his head. “No no, not like that. I have an idea that will not only get you into the castle but will also get me close to Brauner. It is no secret that we both want Brauner dead, unfortunately only one of us is able to make it happen.”

“Get to the point Count.”

“Vlad, please or Dracula. The point my Dear y/n is that Brauner may have control of my castle, but like I mentioned before, he will not keep me out. I can walk right into it and no one will stop me. If you were on my side, you would be able to do the same.”

Pulling away from Dracula you glared at him. 

“What’s the plan Dracula?”

Laughing at the tone of your voice Dracula started to dance with himself as he spoke. 

“Oh my Dear y/n, it is simple. Brauner wants power, he has always been a bit jealous too. Can you imagine how jealous he would be when I come walking into the castle with a willing human at my side."

"Willing human. For what?"

"You are a hunter, what is one of the first things your dear dead teacher taught you about vampires?"

Seeing you stepping towards him Dracula smiled and bowed. 

"That their self center and full of themselves."

Laughing loudly at your comment Dracula quickly pulled you into his arms again and started to dance once more.

"Oh my Dear y/n, while that may be true that was not the answer I was looking for. I was thinking more about our ability to place humans and creatures alike in a trance and have them do our bidding. Can you imagine how jealous Brauner would be when I walk into the castle with a human who WANTS to be there? Someone I didn’t have to force or spell to be there."

"Still don't know how that is going to get you closer to Brauner."

"Well, it is no lie, I am a very sensual creature….."

"Wait you want me to act like I am some stupid human that fell in love with you?"

Making a face, Dracula shook his head as he spun you around. Bringing his face to your neck you couldn’t help but tilt your head to allow him to graze his lips against it. 

"I would not want you to be some stupid human, I enjoy your feistyness. I think we mix well as we are. No, what you would have to do is submit to me. You can't cringe if I was to kiss your neck or even your lips. You have to act as though you enjoy my cold fingers tracing your neck or other parts of your body." Spinning once again you stood facing Dracula as he watched his fingers slipping down your neck. "You do that and Brauner will be itching to get a taste."

"One problem in your plan Dracula. To be completely devoted to you, I have to be willing to let you feed off of me. And you will NOT bite me."

Bringing your wrist to his lips Dracula kissed it before running his face over it.

"Oh my Dear y/n, I do not expect you to allow me such pleasure as that. But there are other ways I can feed from you. In fact your arms give us one way." Looking at your arms you saw cuts from previous fights. Looking back up at Dracula you could see him smile. "So what say you my Dear y/n, do you think you handle my touches?"

Pulling your hand from Dracula’s you placed it on his chest. Fiddling with the buttons on his jacket you looked into his eyes as you used your other hand to pull his face to yours, crashing your lips into each other's. You weren't sure what surprised you more, how cold Dracula’s lips were to yours or how he easily took over the kiss and you let him. Pulling away so that you could breath Dracula closed his eyes and moaned.

"Oh yes, this is going to be marvelous."

~~~~

Getting into the castle had gone just as Dracula said it would. A couple of "young bloods" as he called them tried to stop you and were now dead. At the commotion that was made Brauner's second came into the hallway and when he saw Dracula you almost thought he paled even more. After telling you both that Brauner was having a party Dracula brushed past him while telling you that you both must get ready for said party. 

Thinking that Dracula was going to make you wear a gown you were left glaring at him when he had you slip into something that resembled a night shift. While he wore black pants and a black button up with his knee high boots. You continued to wear the frown on your face until the ballroom doors came into sight.

Just as Dracula slipped his arm around your waist as you rested your head against his shoulder and laid your hand on his chest. When the ballroom doors opened it took all of your will to keep moving. Luckily Dracula was able to keep you moving forward with the arm around your waist. Turning so that you were walking backwards you brought your lips to his ear, as though you were kissing just below it.

"You bastard. You didn’t tell me Brauner's parties looked more like a brothel!"

Wrapping his arms tightly around you, Dracula kept his eyes forward as his teeth grazed your ear.

"Oh my Dear y/n, if I would have done so you never would have continued with our arrangement."

Before you could say anything more a voice rang out.

"AH COUNT DRACULA! I MUST SAY THIS IS BOTH A SHOCKING AND PLEASANT SURPRISE!"

Turning you back around but placing you in front of him Dracula began to walk you both forward as his hands moved across your body. It didn’t take you long to find who had been yelling. And instantly you felt your blood boil. Before you could do anything rash though Dracula was kissing and nibbling on your neck as he spoke.

"Come now Brauner, a surprise it may be but a pleasant one it is not. If it had not been for my love, I would have died from the wounds you and the other’s inflicted on me."

"Your love? Last I knew Dracula had no love and even if there is one I would not imagine it to be a human like this one.” 

Even as you and Dracula came closer Brauner remained seated as two women made out on top of him. For a brief moment you thought that Dracula had been wrong about being able to get close to him but from the corner of your eye you saw two of Brauner’s young bloods stepping closer to all of you. Stopping a few feet before Brauner, you could feel Dracula smiling against your neck. 

“We may not feel love like human’s do, but this sweet human nursed me like she would a newborn baby. Cut her delicate skin and bleed herself so that I could grow stronger from her blood. And even now she still bleeds for me, tell me Brauner how could that not be love? How could I not want to bring her with me when I decided it was time to come back to my old castle and it’s new owner.”

At the mention of the castle Brauner sat straighter, dislodging the women from his lap. 

“Speaking of, have you come to exact your revenge for what me and the other’s had done?”

Instead of dancing like he had most of the night, Dracula pulled your body even closer to his and began to sway lightly as he laid kisses all along your neck and shoulders.

“Have you not heard what I have just said, Brauner? I could care less for the castle or for what you had done. We have just simply come here to see what you have done with the place.” 

“I find that hard to believe.”

Waving his hand at Brauner, Dracula sat in a lounger and pulled you into his lap facing him. Running his hand down your chest you couldn’t help but moan as Dracula gripped your breast. 

“Believe what you want Brauner. Let us rest and enjoy your party for the night and we will leave tomorrow.”

Not waiting for Brauner’s answer Dracula pulled you down and began to kiss you like he had in the woods. 

You knew that everything that was happening was wrong and if Tham was here they would have been beating you to an inch of your life. But you couldn’t help but moan into Dracula’s mouth and grip his shirt as you began to grind against him. Having gotten lost in the pleasure you had forgotten about where you were until you heard Brauner laughing as he spoke. 

“My you have a lively one don’t you Dracula. So easy to give into the creatures of the night. Tell me, if she has become your love then why have you not turned her.”

Ripping his mouth away from yours, Dracula gasped as like he needed air. 

“Perhaps that may happen, at some point. But why would I give up such sweet blood? That I may have at any given moment.”

“Surely you jest.”

Dropping your face into Dracula’s neck to keep you from glaring at Brauner; Dracula turned to look at him. Taking one of his hands from your hip you could feel Dracula pull something from his boot and you bite down on him to let him know you knew what he was planning. 

“Then perhaps we shall show you?” Tugging your hair lightly Dracula forced your head back to look at him. “My Love.”

Even though you wanted to scream and hit Dracula for the position he now had you in, you went along with his plan and lifted your arm while grinded down on Dracula. 

“Not much. I still feel faint from when you drank from me earlier.”

Smiling Dracula placed the knife on your arm. 

“Of course my Love.”

Very quickly Dracula ran the blade down your arm. You expected there to be pain but the blade had been extremely sharp and Dracula had been fast with his movement. You also expected Dracula to pull your arm to his lips but instead he held your arm over his face and held his tongue out as your blood began to fall onto his waiting tongue. Your heart began to beat faster as you watched your blood pouring into his mouth, but you couldn’t tell if it was because you were losing blood or if it was because of the animalistic look that took over Dracula’s face. From the corner of your eyes you could see the other’s as they began to slowly move closer to you and Dracula. Just when you thought things were going to take a turn for the worst you found yourself laying on the lounger as Dracula stood next to it as he yelled.

“UNLESS STATED OTHERWISE MY LOVE IS OFF LIMITS! AND IF YOU TRY WITHOUT PERMISSION I WILL KILL YOU ALL!”

Seeing Dracula shift from his human form to his demon not only had the other’s cowering in fear but you also. Of course before you had time to properly freak out Dracula was back to his human form and kneeling beside you. 

“Are you alright my Love?”

Nodding your head lightly you watched as Dracula ran his tongue over the cut. To your surprise as he pulled his mouth away you saw that the cut was no longer open, but instead looked a couple of days old. Picking you up as though you weighed nothing Dracula resumed his position on the lounger and held you close to his chest. For a time you both laid there and watched as those that had been watching resumed what they had been doing. After a few moments Dracula pulled you up so that he could whisper in your ear. 

“We have Brauner’s attention now. He can’t help but but look over here. We need to really pull him in.”

Turning your head up you dug your nails into Dracula’s chest. 

“What the trick with the blade wasn’t enough.”

“Did we not talk about that?” Digging your nails deeper into Dracula’s skin he actually moaned out when others would have hissed. “We have his attention, but we need him to come closer. I can’t kill him if he stays over there and us over here.”

“It seems to me that you are getting more out of all this then I am. What do I get?”

“Other than walking out of here with your life? You will be able to bathe in Brauner’s blood.”

The thought of being covered in Brauner’s blood had you making a face that caused Dracula chuckle.

“That doesn’t sound appealing.”

Shifting you so that you were once again straddling his lap Dracula lightly ran his hands down your chest which caused your nipples to harden. 

“Pleasure, I can offer you so much pleasure.”

It didn’t take you long to feel Dracula hardening under you and you suddenly realized it has been a very long time since you slept with someone. Without thinking any more about it you muttered quietly “God forgive me.” before you pulled your gown over your head. You could tell that Dracula had not been expecting that move from you, but he wasted no time sitting up and wrapping his mouth around your nipple. 

As Dracula continued to assault your chest one of his hands slipped into your hair and pulled your head backwards. Allowing him to lick and nibble his way up to your neck. Instead of feeling just his teeth grazing your neck though you felt his fangs. Even though he would pinch your skin between his teeth and fangs he never broke skin and the adrenaline of it had you moaning loudly as you pulled the tie from his hair. Tightening your grip on his hair you tilted Dracula’s head back and gave him a warning look when you realized he was spending too much time with his mouth on your neck. Licking his lips Dracula grinned at you before wrapping his lips back around your nipple while his hand moved to the other one. While he continued his attack on your breast you couldn’t help but tip your head back and moan in pleasure as you rolled your hips against him. 

Suddenly Dracula was bringing his mouth back to yours. Even though you were getting lost in the kiss you could feel Dracula’s hands moving down to your ass while he turned the both of you. Lifting slightly he dropped to his knees and laid you on the ground. The cold floor had you gasping out when it touched your heated skin. Chuckling against your mouth Dracula shifted to the side and ran his hand over your thigh. 

“Don’t worry my Love, I will have you warm once again.”

Bending your knee so that your foot rested against the floor. Dracula slowly brought his hand back down to your hip. Reaching between the both of you he began to work on the buttons and knots of his pants. And even though he had been doing a good job of opening them you couldn’t help but reach between the both of you and help him. When your hand wrapped around his cock Dracula placed his mouth onto your collar bone and bit lightly. 

Normally when you held a man’s cock in your hand it was smooth, soft, and warm. Moving your hand over Dracula’s you got two of the three, the only one missing was the warmth. In its place was coldness, similar to you if you were to jump into a frozen lake. After a few more strokes Dracula was shifting the both of you once more. Laying on his back he placed one hand under his head while the other rested on your thigh. 

“You have given to me my Love. Take from me what you want.”

Placing one hand on his chest you lifted yourself just enough so that you could align him with your center. Feeling the tip of his cock slipping into you, you made sure he wasn’t going to slip out of you before placing a hand on his chest as you slowly started to take more of him. As you continued to push down Dracula moved his hands and placed them onto your hips and dug his fingers into you. Soon both of you were moaning out in pleasure. Once fully seated, you sat for a few moments as you adjusted to his size. But even before you were ready Dracula was moving you, which had you crying out in pleasure. Even though he told you that you could take what you wanted from him, Dracula continued to dictate the moves. 

Eventually Dracula sat himself up and while resting one hand behind him, he used his other and placed it in the middle of your back. Even as he held you close you couldn’t help but place your hands behind yourself as you grinded against him. Tilting your head back you couldn’t help but cry out the closer you got to cumming. Soon you could feel Dracula putting pressure on your back causing you to sit up. Before you could rest your head against his though he was moving you both again. 

Somehow he was able to shift the both of you without slipping out and once you were on your back Dracula shifted to his knees. Placing his hands on your hips he quickly began to thrust into you. With how fast he was thrusting, all you could do was grip his arms as you tighten your legs around him. Soon though Dracula began to speak.

"Such beauty, look at you my Love. So lost in your pleasure, sweat running between your breasts. Your blood rising to the surface of your skin, giving you a flushed look. The warmth of your body trying its best to warm my cold skin."

Even if someone found out about this night you would not admit to them how good it felt to be having sex with Dracula or how his voice was bringing you closer to the edge. And it was the sound of his voice that had you suddenly cumming. You could feel something running down your fingers and you didn't need to look to know you had drawn blood from Dracula’s arms as you screamed out in pleasure. You were so lost in your pleasure you didn't even realize that Dracula was resting his head next to yours until you heard him speaking to you.

"Show time."

Pulling himself back to his knees Dracula pulled himself out of you causing you to moan loudly. Hearing him chuckling Dracula began to run his hands over your thighs as he looked up. The coolness of his fingers pulling at your attention so that when Brauner spoke you didn't lose your high. 

"I can see the attraction to the human. She is very sensitive to your touch and more."

Standing up Dracula worked on fixing his hair as he smiled at Brauner. 

"She is very sensitive Brauner. The greatest thing though. Is how she tastes after such a tussle.  Would you like a taste?" Hearing Dracula offering you up like that shook you from your daze. When you tried to get his attention Dracula kept his eyes forward as he moved to the side of you with his arms open. "There is nothing that tastes better, Brauner. And I have you know I have not shared her with another as I am offering you. Let bygones be bygones. Hmm?"

It was taking everything in you not to move as you saw Brauner moving from the corner of your eyes. Unfortunately you saw the young bloods move when he did, but to your surprise he waved them off. As much as you didn't want to, you turned to face him and smiled as you ran your hand over your breast. Slowly Brauner lowered himself to the floor and moved to lay over you. With shaking hands you brought them up to rest on Brauner’s shoulders as he ran his nose over your neck. But before he could bite Dracula’s voice broke out.

"Ah ah ah, you may have a taste, Brauner, but you are not allowed to bite her. If you bit them others would know she belongs to a vampire. No you must cut her skin, it is easier to explain those then teeth marks." 

Grunting above you Brauner raised to his hands and looked up to Dracula. Just as he was raising a hand to take the blade Dracula had for him Dracula moved. 

The next thing you knew you felt something wet covering your chest and face. As you were wiping it off your eyes you realized that it was blood. Sitting up you spotted a headless body at your feet and realized that it was Brauner. Turning quickly you watched as Dracula killed the last of Brauner’s young bloods before he turned to the rest in the ballroom.

"LET IT BE KNOW THAT COUNT VLADISLAUS DRACULA DOES NOT TAKE KINDLY TO BETRAYAL."  Walking back to you Dracula knelt beside you as he spoke more quietly. "Did I not tell you, you would bath in his blood?"

Before you could say anything though Dracula was running his hand over your eyes as he placed his other one behind your head and said "Sleep".

Shooting up quickly you looked around and saw that you were in a room at the inn. Pulling the covers back you noticed you were dressed in the gown Dracula had given you at the castle; and that you were cleaned of any and all blood. Pulling the gown over your head you walked to the mirror and looked over your body. Seeing no bite marks you dressed in the clothes you had been wearing the night before and as you pulled your jacket on you felt something in the pocket. Reaching into it you pulled a letter out and from the seal of it you knew it to be from Dracula. Breaking the seal you opened it.

My Dear y/n,

I am terribly sorry that you were unable to wake up next to me. But atlast I fulfilled the two promises I gave you last night. To leave my castle alive and to bathe in Brauner’s blood. And as you are now reading this in the inn, unharmed, I have fulfilled both. This now ends our deal. So I must tell you that if we are to cross paths again I will have to kill you.

Yours truly,

Count Vladislaus Dracula 

Rereading the letter once more you couldn’t help but feel yourself becoming angry at his arrogance. Walking over to the fire you made sure to rip the letter into pieces before throwing it into the fire. Looking around the room once more you made sure you had all of your things before walking out the door and into the day.

[anxiouspotatorants]

HOLD UP!!! You immediately had me at the "Twilight AU but Rory is the vampire" here 👀👀👀👀. Color me intrigued AND inspired.

Ok so first off, the 'reveal' conversation. The COMEDY potential!! Just Jess being overall nervous but also pretty curious to know about what Rory as a vampire is like, whereas Rory is trying pretty hard to make him be more afraid and to hopefully get him to run away screaming so she can have some reason to tackle him, but this guy just isn't budging!

The shiny skin reveal! Like first off, THIS CAN'T BE THE SAME WITH EDWARD BECAUSE RORY'S NOT PLANNING ON STRIPPING IN FRONT OF JESS HERE (no matter how much she might like him despite her better judgement). Imagine the complete lack of suspense when she just uncovers her arm and shows Jess how it sparkles into the sunlight.

Rory: This is the skin of a killer, Jess!!

Jess: Wow, didn't know murderers had a continuous discount at Claire's for silvery glitter.

Rory: 😒

JESS WITH THE ICONIC GOOGLE SEARCH. THE DREAMS ABOUT RORY COMING IN WITH THE FULL DRACULA GETUP, MENACINGLY LEANING IN TO BITE HIM AS HE TAKES HIS "Paint me like one of your french girls" pose. Jess waking up from it not knowing whether he's scared or has just figured out a new kink for himself.

Jess dodging all of Rory's attempts to get him to stop wanting to see her by just coming in and asking her all of these questions while they're in the middle of the recess crowd in school. Rory giving up after the fourth attempt and answering all of his questions in a hushed tone.

Jess: So you can read people's minds?

Rory: Yes, except for yours. I still haven't figured out why though.

Jess: Huh, maybe Liz's all-round smoking diet during her pregnancy had its benefits after all.

Rory: Jess!!

I'm not sure whether I'd want Rory to be an older vampire like Edward or a more newly-made one, and in this case Lorelai is potentially still human but knows about Rory's condition despite Rory trying to keep her in the dark about it when she first turned. They still haven't found a way to break it to Richard and Emily though, despite their various brainstorming sessions over it.

Lorelai: We could get them drunk and just announce it to them!

Rory: Wonderful, and they'll accept their formerly estranged granddaughter as an undead creature.

Lorelai: Hey, you only asked how we should tell them, you never asked about how they'd handle it.

Jess just straight-up asking if she would eat the bullies in the high-school. Rory vehemently replying that no, she doesn't eat people, she just drinks the blood, but if he must know,......yes she drank from Chuck Presby once because she was angry and hungry and his blood almost tasted like Gatorade, so she's refrained from trying out the other bullies' blood. No, Chuck doesn't know what happened, he just thinks some girl went a bit too far with her hickey.

Jess and Rory talking to each other late at night and organizing a "studying" session where they just end up watching various B-movies, and sometimes Jess ends up falling asleep on the other side of the couch while Rory looks on at him and look, she's not being creepy here, she's just sitting on her side admiring this insane boy who still hasn't woken up one morning and decided that being friends with a vampire girl isn't in fact one of the smartest choices he could make in his life, and she can't help but like him because of that, ok? Also she really needs to hear more of his thoughts on some of the other American classics, it's imperative.

Rory ending up protecting Jess from an ongoing car that almost hits him instead of the whole "other vampire craves his blood" storyline but Jess ends up spraining his arm when he fell to the ground and Rory just feels guilty that she couldn't have saved him in a better way and tries to avoid him after that. Unfortunately she can't because this dumbass is walking along her trail in the nearby woods with his arm in a sling and goddamn it Jess, you're scaring away the deer!!

Yes. A thousand times yes. To all of this. The comedy. The pining. The Google search idea and elder Gilmore announcement. Yes to it all. But may I raise you some alternatives/more ideas:

In the books the sparkling looks more like the vampires are on fire. So when Rory reveals some skin in the sunlight, Jess is like «Shit, stop doing that do you have a death wish?!» and Rory just gives him a shit eating grin and waves her arm in and out of the sunlight. Also what if she doesn’t strip but takes of her sweater to reveal a t-shirt and Jess has a momentary heart attack thinking a vampire was about to flash him? All this being said the Claire’s silvery glitter scene is too good to replace ;-;

There just has to be a point while they’re close friends that Rory tries to impress/scare Jess by pulling him over her shoulders and carrying him while she speed runs. But when she tries to say something badass or seductive she has a brain fart and the only thing that comes out is: «Hold on tight... spidermonkey.» Jess doesn’t get to react before she runs, and when she’s finished the first thing he does is puke (apparently it’s hard to get used to that running according to SMeyer). Rory: «Oh no I’m so sorry I shouldn’t have done it, it was stupid and now you’re hurt and-»

Jess: «Spidermonkey???»

Rory: «oh, you’re fine.»

Jess: «SPIDERMONKEY????»

Rory: «I’ll just leave you here for the bears,» and walks away.

I’m not sure what her vampire origin story should be. It could be all the Gilmores are vampires and they bite each other at a certain age after procreating (and the eldest Lorelai decided to be an asshole and bite Rory early) or it could just be Rory like you said. In that case maybe Christopher became one and bit Rory because he wants her and Lorelai and him to be one big happy family of the night? But Lorelai refused and Rory protected her? Or maybe it was a stranger who passed by Stars Hollow?

Jess questions Rory’s humanity not after being saved by a car crash (pre friendship that is, I still think your idea should come in afterwards) but because he consistently skips school and on a sunny day («How can I lock myself in a stuffy dusty dark room on a day like this, uncle Luke?») he comes upon Rory hunting and eating a dear. That and/or she saves him from the swan. And because it’s Rory and she’s a clumsy new-born she saves him by speeding over and suckerpunching the swan so hard it does an action movie sweep miles into the forest.

Rory’s cover for sunny days in Stars Hollow is that she’s staying at Chilton longer for an assignment, or in the case of her still going to ST High it’s visiting their library for resources. Because she hates missing school, that cover is usually true, and she just refuses to go into any spot with sunlight:

Rory: «I have this skin condition, I have sun allergy»

Madeleine or Louise: «That’s not a thing is it»

Paris: «It is [starts infodumping]»

She usually locks herself in the darkest corner of the library and speeding away in a flash at closing time before anyone can spot her.

Rory has lost count of the amount of times Jess has dared her to drink from him. She refuses because she’s scared if hurting a friend:«What if I taste your blood and it’s so good I can’t stop? Like it tastes like heroin or ecstasy or coffee?» Jess usually counters with either «If you could resist Chuck Presby you can resist me» or «What makes you think I’d taste so good, huh?» Rory always ends up thinking she would have a blush right now if she was still human.

Jess wants to be a vampire too because hey what else does he have a chance at doing in life? But Rory refuses because she sees the potential in him and what he can be, and doesn’t want to take his chance at a good and normal life away from him. But at some point they get into a dangerous situation where Jess’ only options are death or vampyrism and Rory finally gives in. Also this is our AU and we get to decide which Twilight vampire-rules apply and in this AU vampires age mentally (it’s a bullshit excuse SMeyer and you know it).

This one depends on the origin but hey it’s an idea: While Rory was still a new new-born, her and Lorelai locked themselves up in the crap shack for a full week watching all the vampire movies they could in search of information that could help them. Rory decided to do empirical experiments too, and had garlic food, got a cross close to her, wore silver and stabbed her arm a wooden stake. The garlic food (like all food now sadly) tasted crap but didn’t kill her, nor did any of the rest. The wooden stake hurt but it healed fast.

Rory gets both Lorelai and Jess to order insane amounts of food just to watch them eat it because she misses the taste and needs to live vicariously through their tastebuds. In the AU where both Gilmore girls are vampires, they order so much food because they have no idea what the normal amount is (chaotic vampire Gilmores for the win).

Also I did not realize how well Bella and Edward’s powers fit Rory and Jess? Like of course Rory would be a mind reader and of course Jess’ thing would be an all-encompassing shield. Sometime when he’s still human and «bugging» Rory she poses the theory that maybe his head is just empty and doesn’t have any interesting ideas. Jess pretends to be hurt (okay he’s a little hurt but he’d never tell her that) and Rory immediately falls into apologetic mode.

Rory wants to go to prom because it’s a human teenage activity she refuses to miss before starts figuring out what to make out of her vampire life. Jess isn’t hyped for it but promises to get tickets. They end up both going as vampires because that altercation happens a week or so before. Jess struggles with not eating everyone in sight but he sticks close to Rory and they leave without a single drop of blood on their hands.

Also Luke as Charlie! Paying attention to the beat attacks and being the only one who noticed that Rory doesn’t actually eat the food on her plate anymore (her mom eats her own plate then switches it with Rory’s) and when Rory and Jess reveal the secret he momentarily closes down and has to take a fishing trip to process everything. But he comes back a ride or die wanting to protect the poor kids.

I also feel like there should be multiple moments where one is insanely attracted to the other and questions this attraction strongly. Like Rory crushing on Jess and wondering if it’s bloodthirst or just the last remains of her human teenage hormones. And Jess being full on into Rory while still acknowledging the fact that it could be some vampire seduction powers, but what the hell does he care? There’s a cute undead bookworm right there and if he has to go he doesn’t mind dying to be a pretty girl’s lunch meal.

[worldserasingandcreatinginmymind]

Flesh & Blood | Part Two

Series Summary: A mysterious stranger with ties to your past shows up in your small village

Chapter Summary: a quiet village, every day like the one before... until a mysterious stranger arrives

Pairing: Count Dracula x reader

Word Count: 2126

Warnings: none

A/N: as always spelling and grammar is not my strongest skill so please be kind :) if you want to be added to the taglist please drop me a message in my ask box

Y/B/D = your birth date, Y/H/T = your home town 

Masterlist | Part One

- - - - -

2020

The shrill beeping of your alarm wakes you up with a jump. You groan and roll over, picking up your phone from the bedside table and hitting the snooze button before dropping it back down. You allow yourself to stay in bed for the next 5 minutes, but its not long before the alarm is reminding you it’s time to get up and start the day. 

An hour later you're ready and leaving for work. You close the front door of the cottage you live in and head down the hill toward the village high street, taking in the views of the sea as you walk. You’ve lived in this village for as long as you can remember, but the view still makes you smile. 

The high street is one main road that runs through the small village and is lined with shops either side. As you walk down the street you greet various other villagers opening up their shops for the day. You hold your breath as you pass the butchers so you cant smell the scent of the uncooked meat hanging in the window. Then you pass the florist and take a deep breath, floral scents flooding your senses. You stop when you reach the local clothes shop and see the owner cleaning up shattered glass.

“Morning Roger” you say and he turns to look at you with sad eyes “what happened?”

“oh someone broke in last night. Smashed the window and stole the suit straight off the mannequin” he points to the naked mannequin left standing in the broken window display.

“did they take anything else?” 

“Nothing. Not even a penny from the till. Just the one suit, thats it.”

“that’s weird. At least theres not too much damage though”

“I guess I should count myself lucky that it could have been much worse. Have a good day y/n” he says with a tired smile as he takes the bucket of broken glass inside the shop.

You pass a few more shops before you reach the door of the bakery cafe and swing the door open, the familiar scent of fresh baked bread and cakes fills the air.

“Morning Maggie” you call as you drop your bag behind the counter and head into the kitchen at the back.

“morning love” She responds, looking at you over the top of her flour covered glasses as she kneads dough on the counter. Maggie is an older lady, with a friendly wrinkled covered face and greying curly hair which was currently contained in a hairnet. She had always been like a grandmother to you, and since losing your parents she was the only family you had left. Apart from being a bit of a gossip, she was a really lovely lady and you love working for her and listening to her crazy conspiracy theories. “did you hear all the drama last night?”

“yeah I’ve just seen Roger outside, he told me all about the break in” you respond, grabbing your apron off the hook and tying it around your waist. 

“oh no I meant about the drama on the beach?”

“no? What happened?”

“oh it all kicked off. Helicopters, sirens, the works. You didn’t hear any of it from up the hill?” 

“nope, must have slept right through it.”

“you young people, you’ll sleep through anything” Maggie says putting another batch of bread in the oven “well you missed all the fun. They dragged a body out of the sea and-”

“a body?!” You interrupt.

“well according to Carol anyway. She said she heard from Jan that someone had reported a body on the beach. Her grandson works in the police so she finds out things from him. Anyway, the police raced down there straight away but when they got there the army had already arrived and told them to leave. Army outrank the local police apparently.”

“wow” 

“and thats not all. I ran into Nigel this morning in the supermarket. Nigel lives right by the beach and he said he heard a gunshot and a load of shouting last night. He looked out the window and saw a woman lying on the sand bleeding, and people in black uniforms running everywhere. Looked like there were chasing a man. He ran down to see if he could help but by the time he got there the beach was empty. No sign of anyone at all. Strange right?”

“very” you nod, trying to seem more interested “what do you think happened?”

“maybe it was a vampire” a mans voice suddenly speaks and you both turn around to see a tall man with jet black hair stood looking at you through the serving hatch. 

“a vampire? Now theres a suggestion I didn’t expect to hear” Maggie laughs and the stranger laughs back at her, but you get the feeling he wasn’t really joking. 

“What are you cooking back there? Something smells.. exceptionally good” he says, his dark eyes fixed on you.

“All sorts of magic happening in these ovens, but unfortunately we’re not actually open till 8am” Maggie replies in her usual customer service voice and she walks through into the shop. You stay back in the kitchen, mixing the dough for the next batch of bread. 

“oh I’m very sorry, I didn’t know. I’m new around here” you hear the man say, he talks like an old fashioned gentleman.

“no bother, it’s alright. If you want to take a menu and come back in half an hour we’ll be happy to serve you a slice of magic”

“wonderful. I’ll be back then.” You watch as he turns to leave, then stops. “see you later Y/N” he shouts through to you and your eyes go wide as he shuts the door behind him.

“ooh I think someone likes you” Maggie teases and she walks back into the kitchen.

“how did he know my name?” You say, not really asking but more thinking out loud. 

“hmm I don't know. Probably read it off your name tag” she replies casually as she carries on baking. 

You look down at the small name tag you forgot was attached to your apron and let out a small sigh. Of course that makes sense. But you couldn’t shake the uneasy feeling in the pit of your stomach when you thought about the darkness in his eyes. 

— — — — 

The day was dragging. The usual customers came and went, each with their own theories about what had happened the night before. Maggie was happy to listen and share her own views with them but you ended up zoning out every time. Instead you wondered about the stranger from this morning. Who was he? He said he was new here, does that mean he’s staying or just passing through? Either way, something about him made you feel weird and you found yourself watching the door anxiously every time the little bell above it rang. 

You were clearing tables after the lunch rush before you could go on your own lunch break, when the door bell dinged and a woman you didn’t recognise walked in. 

“take a seat, I’ll be with you in a moment” you say politely as you carry a tray of dirty dishes and mugs into the kitchen. You pick up your little note pad and pen ready to go take her order when Maggie stops you. 

“its okay love, I’ll serve her. You have your lunch” she says gesturing to the plate of sandwiches she’s made for you then walking out into the cafe greeting the stranger in her usual loud and bubble manner. 

You smile and take the food out through the back door and take a seat on the grassy bank. The sunshine warms your skin as you tuck in to the delicious sandwiches which Maggie has packed with your favourite filling. Once you’ve finished eating you lie with your back on the grass, watching the seagulls fly high above you and the white clouds moving slowly across the perfect blue sky. 

You lie there daydreaming for a while but when a fly noisily buzzes past your face and makes you jump you sit up, swatting it away with your hand. You check the time on your watch, almost time to get back to work. You take a few deep breathes of the fresh air before standing up and brushing the grass off you. Something catches your attention in the corner of you eye and you turn to look. 

There he is. 

The stranger from this morning stood in the shade, leaning against a tree trunk. A shiver tickles down your spine and he smirks at you as the two of you lock eyes.

“Y/N love, could you come back in now?” Maggie calls, poking her head out the door.

“yes yeah ill be right there” you respond looking at her and she goes back inside. You look back over to the tree but he’s gone. Was he ever really there or is he just on your mind? 

You walk back into the kitchen, deep in thought. 

“are you alright love?” Maggie ask, concerned when she sees the look on your face.

“yeah I’m fine” you snap out of it and smile at her. You spot the unknown lady still sat at the same table she was at before you went on lunch. “she’s still here?”

“she asked if she could use our wifi to do some work on her computer, I said its fine as long as she buys something. Anyway, I’m just nipping out. Will you be okay to run things here for a while?”

“of course, see you in a bit” you smile as she heads out the front door. The lady looks up at you from her laptop and you smile, but she just looks back down and carries on working. 

Ten minutes later the cafe is empty apart from you and the mysterious lady. 

“excuse me, could I get two more coffees please?” She calls to you and you nod. 

“two? Sure yeah, coming up” you reply slightly confused. Two? Maybe someone is coming to join her. 

You make the coffees and carry them over to her, carefully placing them down on the table next to her laptop. 

“Thanks, this one’s yours. Will you sit?” she gestures to the chair opposite her.

“huh? Oh, no thank you. I cant, I’m working right now” 

“theres no one else in here. Just sit for a moment. I have something important to discuss with you” she says friendly enough but with a serious undertone.

“i don't understand-” you start

“Y/N Y/L/N. Born Y/B/D in Y/H/T, but moved here to this village when you were 4 years old and you’ve lived her ever since. Your parents died 5 years ago in a car crash and since then you’ve lived alone in your family home, the lovely little cottage up on that hill.”

“How do you know all of this?”

“Sister Y/N, your great great grandmother, was a nun in Saint Mary’s convent of Budapest in the late 1800’s. In 1897 every nun in that convent was slaughtered. All but three, your great great grandmother was one of them. She fled to England and started a new life. A family.”

“How do you know this?” You repeat, getting frustrated. 

“Because I am a direct descendant of one of the other survivors, Sister Agatha Van Helsing. I’m Dr Zoe Van Helsing”

“What, so, someone broke into a nunnery and killed everyone. But our ancestors got away?” You don't understand why any of this matters.

“not someone, something” she pauses “a vampire”

“a vampire?” You stare at her in disbelief and she nods. She’s not joking, she really believes this. “this is ridiculous, I don't know what game you're playing with me but I want no part of it” you say walking away from her. 

“this is not a game, this is real. Y/N, a vampire killed all those nuns back then, and now he’s back. He’s here, and I think he’s looking for you” 

Her words stop you dead in your tracks. 

“He could have killed her, Y/N, but he didn’t. He made the decision not to kill her and he let her go.” She continues and you turn to face her again. “it’s all here in this journal written by your great great grandmother. I think you should read it”

You slowly walk back over to her and take a seat at her table. She pushes a very old, slightly torn and battered journal across the table to you. You open it up to the bookmarked page and begin reading. 

“1897. 

It all started when the undead man arrived…”

Part Three

Taglist: @a-dorky-book-keeper​ @agent-smulder​