#which i'm sure is part of why (in addition to him being a vamp with no soul) buffy and everyone else doubted that he really did love her

[cobra-creampuff]

i do love that everyone is visibly shocked and grieving when buffy dies, sobbing, crying, stumbling, etc, but spike fucking collapses

[sneepity-snoop-snorpity-sneep]

I gotta blabber for a sec about how much I appreciate how unique and SO not-simple of an antagonist Olrox is.

like he's introduced as the Vampire Who Kills Richter's Mom, and it was a straight-up murder. Like he fully sought her out, she was in the process of sending her kid overseas most likely because she knew he was coming - even before we fully get Olrox's side of the context, we can tell that shit was personal. Right down to the vivid green eyes, he's giving weirdly chill disney villain vibes. But the entire rest of the show? He's the dude in the bad guy car of the villain train just sitting and judging (OH is he judging) every other person there.

Olrox tracking down and killing Julia Belmont is the most confrontational we ever see him get. Every other scene he's in? He's watching, assessing, sometimes philosophizing, and eventually pulling his own chess moves, but fighting? Rarely! And the additional context of his character makes him even more fascinating!!

Olrox is really one of the only vampires in both Castlevania and C: Nocturne that seems to hold onto a connection to a human's life - even after he's no longer one. He reminisces to Mizrak about being a human during the fall of the Aztec Empire, he chooses to spend his time more like a human than any vamp since Lisa sent Dracula traveling like a human way back when.

Homeboy crossed the Atlantic by fucking ship, at a time when the trip took literal weeks and weeks and he can't even leave his quarters except at nighttime (granted, idk if he *has* a faster way to cross the ocean but it kinda seems like he'd do the ship trip anyways) he chooses to rent a room at an inn instead of staying at the chateau (and boink a cute human in said room, cough cough), and really seems to avoid other vampires - although I'm not sure if that's cuz he just doesn't vibe with 'em in general, or because he really doesn't vibe with the current hot vampire philosophy of the century, which seems to be very heavy-handled colonialism + elitism

I kinda wouldn't be surprised if it's both honestly - given that the only other vampire we meet besides him who spent time in the americas/new world was a literal plantation owning slaver (and unless I misremember, Annette says there were multiple vampires among the rich in St. Domingue), it seems pretty likely to me that whoever turned him was probably a vamp who had a direct hand in the downfall of his nation - coming to the New World specifically for conquest and to seize resources seems like it would be hella appealing for vampires. It would make a LOT of sense for Olrox's standoffish behavior around the other vamps to go back to him having been turned by someone very similar to them, who was probably not just an enemy to him, but part of this massive wave of destructive change in his human life.

like he really gives an impression of actively disliking and withdrawing from every other villain's motivation in this show - and it makes a lot of sense if my speculating is even a little bit close. The vampire's goals in Nocturne would be very nearly the same thing that drove the fall of the Aztec Empire - desire for power and control, justified by some """""natural order"""" hierarchy which really just boils down to 'we want all of this and we're going to indulge in making up a dramatic jerk-off reason why we're entitled to it, since you can't stop us taking it anyways and we've got time'

Dude seems to make little effort to be vampire-like - we rarely see him revel in his power like many other vampires do, as well as seeing him nonchalantly rubbing elbows with humans. He speaks fondly of a man he loved, who he fell for while said guy was still human, TO the other human he is currently crushing on! And I do mean crush, like he doesn't react to or treat Mizrak like a plaything, almost every time we get an Olrox lore-drop it's because he's talking to Mizrak sincerely about things that matter to him. He LIKE-likes this human, to the point of jumping directly into a fight to whisk Le Crush to safety in front of a vampire so powerful he won't directly oppose her! Absolutely fascinating behavior all around.

MAN but I want to see some flashbacks from this guy - as far as we know, vampirism is completely an Old World thing - Europe, Asia, Africa, every other vampire we've seen in both Castlevania shows has been from these continents. Were there even any vamps there at all before europeans landed on the shores of the americas???? I mean, I've heard of one of the old religions in mesoamerica having a suspiciously vampirelike god, but how would that connect to Olrox getting vampirized as a 30ish Aztec man?

MAN OH MAN but I am looking forward to seeing what Olrox gets up to in s2 -I'm burning to know if he's gonna survive the series or not, because despite him being the first villain we meet in Nocturne and doing a deed that usually gets villains the 'karmic death' ending, overall he's not really being written like a bad guy the audience wants to see go down. especially since he's not actually in opposition to our protagonists and has a vested interest in keeping one of Team Good Guys newer members alive. My guess is he's either going to get a similar ending to Isaac, a villain that we root for who actually catches a break and doesn't die, ooorrrrrrrr he's gonna get a Highly Tragic sort of death

[casketjones]

I'm not sure how to info dump for a bunch of character concepts in a way that's digestible but eh whatever

Concept work for a group of mafia hitwomen and their long suffering handler. They're likely going to be used in a underground illegal wrestling ring arc because that's all I really want in my media.

This post plus additional sketches and more background info will be going up on my patreon and kofi tomorrow.

more under the cut,

They're all vampires that I really cooked up to test a concept for vamps for my comic project. Based on a blood sucking animal and a historical anti-vampire burial method, some of the burial methods are gonna be pushed and fibbed because there's not that many of them. so yeah incidental vampires will have a cage motif even tho I know good and well that cages were to prevent resurrection men getting in not vampires getting out. I feel that's thematically close enough. There's so many really good sanguivore animals out there these are maybe too safe even.

The other thing I really wanted to accomplish with these designs is targeting lesbians, hey ladies these are for you. How am I doing?

going left to right here we got

Flea- She's a Flea I tried taking a lot from Blake's Ghost of a Flea but I don't think it comes through. Her grave-shackle is that scythe coming out her shoulder, it's maybe a bit of a stretch, the real thing was buried in the ground next to the corpse so if it rose it would decapitate itself but I didn't really want to complicate the design with a bunch of dirt or something. Regardless I like her design a lot. Short hairy goblin of a woman, someone stop me from naming her Puce.

Mosquito- Her hair took a little bit to sort out, it used to be real bad but this mess is perfect. Horrible 90's stylized part call back, reminiscent of boxer braids while being ostentatious enough to work in any setting. That cool bangle is her grave-shackle, an actual shackle this time. Her build was immediate, huge arms, weird long butt, perfection. She's the easiest to dress which isn't that surprising considering shes thinner but usually big arms are really difficult in women's wear. Flea is actually the second easiest to dress. There's gotta be a better name than Malaria, but i could call her Mal.

Geo(?)- small mafia man, constantly put upon, constantly behind the 8-ball with upper management; you know the type. The other guys definitely tell him he's lucky all the time but they'd never switch assignments with him. Why is he so small? because I can do whatever i want. His name might be Geoffrey.

Lamprey- Went through the most iterations, was very hard to piece together a woman this disaster lesbian. The spike through the heart, traditionally meant to keep the alleged vampire pinned to the ground was always part of the design, so was the long neck and heart lipstick, the hook earring came and went. Everything else was difficult; general build was pretty similar but i didn't actually work until I gave her a gut and dropped her waist. I used to have gill markings on her neck that looked like vampire bite marks and that took a while to give up but that hair is too good. She probably will end up being named Nakkila, it's a Finnish town with lamprey on their crest.

Leech- Took just two stabs to get her hair, body and face where I wanted it. Those bright red eyebrows work so well to subtly mimic leech markings, her hair shapes are perfect and I love drawing them. It's hard to tell at this size but her lips are sewn together which works almost too well for the theming, the cartoon jack'o lantern shape just sits right on a leech. Being built like a brick shithouse with fantastic fat rolls really gives the body diversity in the group the punch it needs. But dear god in heaven she is so hard to dress! I'm liking this dress a moderate amount right now and I really love the shoes but it's not perfect. I've tried suits instead, I've down active wear, all crazy difficult. It's like fashion doesn't want to accentuate horizontal stripes on large bodies or something? I gotta keep trying on it. I've almost convinced myself to name her Annelid.

[wizardofvamp]

Helloooo it's me again!! Could I please have 4, 10, 17, 19, 20 for the vtm player asks?

Hiyahiya glad to see you again!! Apologies in advance for the wall of text ;-; 4. What's your favourite clan? Why?

There are several clans close to my heart-- Malks, Tremere and Gangrel leap to mind. But the Tzimisce will always be my favorite. I could go on for ages as to why, but to keep it short and simple: they occupy a niche genre sweet spot for me. Vampires and body horror are my primary jams, and the clan marries classic gothic vamps and 90s splatterpunk in a way I adore. Also I'm trans, and come from a family with a few ministers floating around in it. So genderfuck pack priests are appealing to me! 10. What's been your favourite interaction throughout your VtM experiences? Can be in game, playing video games.. anything.

Def pulling from Marcel's catalog here, but this time gonna reference something more grounded. Early in the campaign, like year one when Marcel was still a brand new fledgling, SI firebombed his sire's haven (long story but yes it was Marcel's fault). Marcel was bonded, to the point of it overcoming Rötschreck to try storming up smoke-choked flights of stairs to try to rescue him. It was a lost cause, he had to be dragged out of the burning building by his coterie-mates. There were still hunters around, and they needed to be neutralized. Marcel went "fuck that" and tried hiding in one of the vans the Hunters had rolled up in. In it, he met Lily. She was the teenage daughter of one of the leaders of this Leopold-esque hunter cult that was tearing through the area, insanely high true faith and had been kept around as a human shield/potential sacrifice. The two of them sat in the back of this van, both having been recently, violently liberated from the men who had been shuffling them both around like disposable cards, and after a surprising heart-to-heart they decided to go "fuck it, we're leaving, we've had enough for tonight" and zip away from the clusterfuck with the van. Coterie mates were upset about being ditched but once they met Lily chilled out considerably. She was more or less adopted by the eldest vamp of the coterie (a Banu who helped her become the Buffy she is today, one who would die tragically two years later) and she and Marcel remain close like a big brother/little sister dynamic. Though their relationship is more strained these nights with how Marcel has started picking up the habits of the old bastards that they were fighting to begin with.

17. You suddenly switch places with one of your characters, which one would you prefer to be?

Definitely not Marcel, since I'm pretty sure he's IOU'd his soul to like three different Horrible Entities for powerboosts and I don't think I can handle that kind of existential stress. Wouldn't want to be Bell for similar reasons, though at least his pacts are uncertain end-times cashouts whereas Marcel's are due *checks watch* now. I'd be tempted to say one of the Ghouls (Eliza or Canary, wouldn't want to live Roman's life if you paid me the entire planet's income) since they have the least amount of Deadly Stakes and could potentially find a way out of all the scary stuff. But both of them are pretty damn enmeshed, so that seems unlikely... I guess Ana? Because out of everyone he 1) Has a really nice house (just don't look in the basement) and a healthy bank account 2) multiple, unlife-long contacts that are reliable af 3) has relatively more freedom than any of my other guys. Does all that stability come with a stupidly high and arguably unhinged personal, Mihal-shaped cost? Yes, but better the evil you know, right?

19. Which character is least spoken about? Speak about them now!

Probably Bell and Canary (yes they are a unit much like Ana and Roman so I speak of them both)! They're a wandering Malk/ghoul pair who make music out of the back of a station wagon (def in part inspired by Ghost's band in Lost Souls). They're an excellent addition to the blunt rotation on the short term but it's recommended that you handle Bell with care--he's like a large cat. Even when he's playful he can be dangerous because he's lost grip on how hard he can hit. Sometimes a "fun" conversation can veer so off track the neonate Bell was toying with is a shattered husk by sunrise. Canary seems to be the only one with the mental fortitude to handle Bell's crueler fits, and because of this they tend not to stay in one place for too long.

Canary's a younger ghoul--he's been travelling with Bell for around a decade and a half. His family got... got by the fae. How did he end up being the sole survivor? He doesn't like to talk about it. He was picked up by Bell while hitch hiking, and they've been inseparable since. They aren't bonded, mostly because Bell knows his vitae can be destabilizing enough and he likes Canary! So as sturdy as he believes his dear ghoul to be that's not something he wants to mess with. As far as Bell, he's equally closed-lipped about his history. He's old, of elder blood that's for certain. How elder he doesn't even know anymore--he actively avoids memorium out of fear that he would never return from it, or return as someone different. So if the sands of time tuck something away he does as a mortal would and makes his peace with it. One of the few facts Canary does know is that Bell was a pack priest before finding him, a fellow sole survivor with no interest in outlining the how or why. Wrote a play around these two a year-ish ago, around a big winter reunion Bell decided to throw for some old friends--I want to adapt it into prose for the ole writing blog, though when I'll get around to that is an outstanding question. 20. Is there something specific that influences you for your character creations?

Hmmm. Like specific influences for my characters? Or a pattern/habit of mine regarding character creation? A small answer for both questions! Marcel - Winslow Leach, Griffith (the thesis was 'nerd griffith who isn't hot but still has the manipulative rizz with the Toreador Baseball player of the coterie being Fancier Guts) Ana - People keep accusing him of being Evil Carlisle Cullen and I can't even come close to beating those allegations

As far as general influences when making characters-- it's hard to say? I tend to gravitate toward particular lore/skill and then tease a character out from there. Marcel was made because I was interested in v20's Thaumaturgy, Ana was made both because I'd been chomping at the bit to play a tzim for years and Obertus Rev lore lives rent free in my brain. I really dig messing around with Rev families in general, something that'll likely become clear when I post more writing about Kliment.

[bonny-kookoo]

Noir: Memento Mori 3

In which Jungkook is painfully reminded that living eternally is never simply a blessing, but a curse as well; and he can't help but wonder why he's still roaming around, living on, when there's nothing there to live for. Or is there?

Tags/warnings: hopelessness, death and mention of funerals and cremation, jungkook being stuck in the past, soulmates and other shenanigans, more TBA as the story progresses

Additional Chapter Warnings: mentions of harassment

Previous | Next

As you walk back into the kitchen of the restaurant, you take a moment to drink some water. "You're okay?" A coworker asks you, as she prepares some drinks to take out to the tables. "They're quite a handful. If they get to much, remember to call Harvey over, you know he'll help." She says, as the man named Harvey shouts at one of the cooks, before grabbing two plates to prepare a dish for someone to bring out to the guests.

"I know." You say, sighing as you rub your forehead. "I'm gonna be fine." You tell her as you adjust the small scarf around your neck, velvet fabric hiding the scar you'd had since you were a child.

"Tell Harvey I told you to go right after finish today. Don't stay for cleaning; we'll take care of that." She tells you, as you nod.

"Thanks Jenny, you're a lifesaver." She smiles as she pats your back, resuming her work as you do yours. When you walk out, there's a single person sitting at a table in the far corner, seemingly waiting as you grab a menu like second nature. "Welcome sir, would you like something to drink?" You ask, as the man looks up.

You remember him from the park incident, although he looks q bit less chaotic now; the suit he's wearing nice and clean, black dress shirt unbuttoned at the top. He's in all black, several rings adorning his ears as he nods, silver piercings moving in motion. "Do you have any menus for uhm.." he points at the side of his mouth, a silent sign of vampirism as you nod understandingly.

"Ah, or course."You say, before you walk off to get a different menu from the kitchen. "Harv, there's another Vamp out." You tell the head chef, as he nods, preparing his ingredients. When you walk back out, there's comments flying your way from a table of several young men, celebrating the day before marriage for one of them. The man at the table waiting looks a bit more serious now, accepting the menu you give him.

"Is it only you serving?" He asks, as you shake your head, trying not to stare at the way he sits. He's got one leg over the other, his entire posture very sure of himself and confident- yet somehow not overly aggressive with it.

"We're two servers tonight, this part of the dining room is mine though. We always split it to make work a bit easier." You say, as the man nods, occasionally glancing at the loud table, before he places the menu back into your hands. "Number 6, and a large bottle of water will be fine. I'll let you choose the appetizer." He says, looking at you for the first time. You've had bad experiences with vampiric people before, so the red in his eyes makes you a but nervous.

You nod, as you walk off to type in his order and maybe catch a breather outside for a second.

The rest of the night carries on rather well, until the young men decide to get up after paying- the restaurant trying to close for more than twenty minutes now. Once you're outside again, they're there- calling out to you, walking closer, two vampires among them who seem rather starving even after their meal.

You blame the alcohol.

But just as you're about to walk to the bus stop, there's a person next to you. "Play along." He hums to you, before he leads you to a car parked close, without touching you at all- his hand hovering over your back as he helps you sit down in the passenger seat. "They're already leaving. If you want to take the bus, stay inside for a moment until they're gone for good." He says, looking out the window as you pull your bag a little closer.

"Thanks." You say, voice quiet.

"Scared of vampires?" He asks, no bad tone in his voice, but simple interest.

"A bit." You admit, as he nods.

"You're honest." He replies, and you hum a reply. "Thats good. Be careful with it. " He says, as you nod, slowly opening the passenger door as if to test if he'd let you.

He doesn't even move.

But you notice later on, that he only begins to drive off once you're safely inside the bus, his headlights following you for two streets before disappearing.

You make a mental note to visit your doctor the next day, as your scar hardly let's you sleep that night.

[jessicanjpa]

Ooh, now I'm intrigued! Would you like to share some of your Jasper and Maria headcanons? How do you envision their relationship dynamic changing over time?

I still have those two separate headcanons about whether they were sexually involved (explained here)- basically, in my regular prequel headcanon (Tale of Years) they weren’t, and in my newer, SST headcanon they were.

In both, though, she tried (duh), but not immediately, because he was too unstable.  So in the yes-they-were-intimate headcanon, they were both incapable of really ever enjoying that intimacy- Maria, because I take her grief/vengeance trope at face value, and Jasper, because his gift was repulsed by Maria’s emotions surrounding said trope.  So their coupling was miserable anyway, didn’t happen often, and Jasper was super relieved when she cut him off after his betrayal of letting Peter run away.

Lately I’ve been more curious about Maria herself.  Like I said, I’m mean so I totally take her “vengeance is my life now” theme at face value. (also because subtlety and Maria are not acquainted and never will be)  I mean… what was she like before her mate was killed? I infer that she was “born” into the whole Southern Wars culture, but how warlike was she before she had her own personal vendetta?  I HC that she and her mate were both created by the same vampire and, being “raised” in that Southern Wars culture, both had a strong sense of filial loyalty to that creator, in a warped “military family” sense. I guess a lot would depend on whether their creator already had a vendetta going.  I assume so, since she seemed to be all about “reclaiming Monterrey” as a relatively young vampire, so again I infer there was already something going on vendetta-wise in her venomline before she was even created.  (I’m making a bunch of huge logic-jumps here, but how else would headcanon-forming be any fun?)

I also don’t know what to think about her mate.  I finally talked about her love/anger at him in my version of the Calgary incident, but like… how warlike was *he?  Would he really have wanted her to devote her existence to such a futile quest for vengeance? (Because I also HC that Maria is majorly stalling much like the Romanians are; this HC is explained more here)

The real question is: how would she feel if she finally achieved that vengeance, or if she was to learn that Lorenzo (the arch-enemy in my HC) had been killed already? I imagine a huge, burdens-rolling-away sense of relief, and it’s anyone’s guess what she would be left with.  According to SM’s rules, she’d have nothing left and be ready to die.  But there’s enough evidence to say that every vampire deals with grief differently, so… it’s possible she could return to whatever state she was in before the whole mess began.  Which could be totally indistinguishable from her current state, or the complete opposite.  What was she like, back as a human or Young Vampire In Love?  We’ll never know.  *Jasper will never know.  He asked back in the day, and quickly learned Not To Ask.  It irked him for a long time, since Maria was, for better and for worse, the most important person in his life, and he felt he couldn’t accurately deal with her without all the details.  Now that he has a new Most Important Person, he’s stopped caring. Mostly.

I generally assume that his sparing Maria’s life multiple times is mostly due to his gift, and the understanding it forces him into.  He’s been with her so long he’s felt every point of her Grief narrative, and totally understands why she’s the way she is.  And by the time he met her again in Calgary (and was given new reasons to kill her, but didn’t again), he had a mate of his own and understood even more. I think it’s up for debate whether he spares her out of spite, or out of pity, (in addition to a vestigial sense of affection/honor) but either way, by that time he was a Cullen and mercy is what Cullens are expected to do.  He was relatively new to the family at that time, and more impelled to prove that he could be what they (and more importantly, Alice) wanted him to be.  By the time Bella and Bree come around, he’s kind of over that.  Threats should be neutralized, and there’s not a day that goes by that he doesn’t regret sparing Maria’s life back in Calgary.  He spent most of the Saga asking himself why he didn’t “Accidentally” kill Bella back before Edward reached the point of no return, so when Bree comes around he decides not to make the same mistake a third time. (referring to my HC that he totally “helped” Carlisle and Esme suddenly be okay with Bree’s execution)

Does he miss the Maria days now? I’m sure there’s some teeth-grinding, sarcastic “at least I didn’t have to sit in a damn high school” self-talk every other day, but in general, no way.  There’s a broader feeling that he misses feeling powerful, and important, and productive, and respected/feared by his soldiers and all that… but of course in retrospect he sees how much of that was a lie all along.   Because I HC that he really did believe Maria’s lies.  Sure, he spotted the holes and inconsistencies in her storytelling (and who knows what his gift picked up in terms of outright lying) but by that time he was already so wrapped up in Maria’s blood-approval-importance-blood feedback loop that he couldn’t comprehend living any other way.  By the time he understood the pattern (that his soldier’s lives didn’t matter and neither did his) he had several years’ worth of logic built upon the foundation of the Worldwide Vamp Wars totally existing (and his having seen enough to believe it).  In retrospect he had some evidence to the contrary, and he feels stupid and angry about the whole thing (and completely mystified that his gift let him fall for it), but to his credit, as a human he was unaware of the Southern Wars raging in his backyard, and yet here they are. (I hope to sorta-soon write a 1865 one-shot that connects the Galveston chapters to the 1941 chapters, and covers his newborn self-talk.)

But aside from Maria’s creativity, how much self-talk got him around to that logical foundation in the first place?  Who knows. In Tale of Years, he’ll never figure that out himself.  His sense of honor prefers to think that he was totally fooled, so that he doesn’t have to face the possibility that he *chose to stay in that life for 78 years.  He’d much rather sacrifice his pride. In SST Aro is totally going to pluck that (largely invented) self-talk out of his memory and throw it in his face. Anything to further dismantle Jasper’s self-image and rebuild it as suits him best.  He’s a little concerned about Jasper’s gift picking up on this process, but he’s encouraged by Maria’s success, and in any case Chelsea’s been busy.  Now Jasper’s logical foundation is that Aro Is A Good Leader, and everything will follow from that point.  For now.

Sorry, I’m off track again. How has Jasper/Maria shifted over time? It’s intriguing to note that Jasper’s relationship with her was kicked off *while she, Nettie, and Lucy were technically the joint leaders.  He had to choose, very early on, which one of those leaders he was going to support.  It was a foregone conclusion that he would choose Maria, but this had long-lasting effects in their working (and/or intimate) relationship, especially once he helped her destroy the other two. Maria’s fear of betrayal never left her after that, and despite Jasper’s show of loyalty there, he’s too wrapped up in that betrayal narrative to ever be separated from it, in her mind.  But he knew how to survive, and proved his loyalty often enough to keep her satisfied  Other than his continued slide into revulsion/depression over the decades, I don’t think a whole lot changed between them from then on until Peter’s desertion.  (though I confess that’s mainly because I haven’t written anything about those intervening years.)That was when Maria officially began to turn against Jasper and perform a paranoid dissection of every word that came out of his treacherous mouth. (more on this in the final scenes of SST chapter 1)  The five years that followed were basically a slow descent into well-founded mutual suspicion, and finally deteriorated into the assassination plots.  Enter Peter at the last minute as per the usual Twilight Coincidence Magic, and all is well.

And now they’re “friends”. Which… in this universe, is a pretty broad term, so I choose to interpret it as a polite, unspoken no-kill pact that was kicked off in Calgary. It continues to this day, and let’s not even get into the weirdness of Jasper thinking about asking Maria to come “help” in Eclipse.  I assume that blackmail was going to be the larger part of that AU subplot, which is apparently a standard part of the “Friend” thing too.

As far as the future goes… I’m curious if SM was heading toward some resolution of the Jasper/Maria plotline, sometime after BD?  I’m so curious about this, and 100% open to ideas.