#which is a weird way to lead into vampires since At Least Dracula vampire stories dont start until the victorian - progressive era

[todayisafridaynight]

thinking about vampiric arakawas again just so i can make a 'blood-sucking politician' joke

[personasintro]

sucker (m.) | pjm

❥𝒔𝒚𝒏𝒐𝒑𝒔𝒊𝒔; You wish you'd pay more attention to Jimin. Like, how his eyes kept changing color. How cold his skin was, too unrealistically to be natural. Or one second, he flashed you with his sharp canines and the next one he didn't have any. How much he craved for you, but not the way you thought he was.

❥𝒈𝒆𝒏𝒓𝒆: smut, angst, vampire au, horror au (?), vampire!jimin x human!reader, supernatural au

❥𝒘𝒂𝒓𝒏𝒊𝒏𝒈𝒔: explicit language, smut; slight biting, oral sex [man receiving], fingering, penetration, unprotected & rough sex, slight dom!jimin, death & mentions of death, blood, mentions of alcohol

❥𝒘𝒐𝒓𝒅 𝒄𝒐𝒖𝒏𝒕: 10.9k+ 

𝒂/𝒏: I got this story idea after halloween and this is the first time I've written a vampire au, so I really hope you'll like it, this is something new for me but was so much fun to write!! banner by @dee-ehn​ (thank you luv, you did an amazing job!!)

𝒎.𝒍𝒊𝒔𝒕  | © 𝒑𝒆𝒓𝒔𝒐𝒏𝒂𝒔𝒊𝒏𝒕𝒓𝒐 (𝒏𝒐 𝒓𝒆𝒑𝒐𝒔𝒕𝒔 𝒐𝒓 𝒕𝒓𝒂𝒏𝒔𝒍𝒂𝒕𝒊𝒐𝒏𝒔 𝒂𝒓𝒆 𝒂𝒍𝒍𝒐𝒘𝒆𝒅)

Frat parties aren’t usually Jimin’s go-to place but considering the sudden circumstances, he had to agree and couldn't say no to his friend who had chosen the most overcrowded party. In other cases, Jimin would’ve chosen somewhere less crowded but enough to blend with his surroundings. Although, Taehyung deserves a few points for thinking this out considering today’s theme is Halloween. There’s no need to hide anything, especially their appearance that still doesn’t seem as weird as people dressed as pumpkin and other weird costumes. Just as a young male passes by, obviously dressed as Dracula while wearing a cheap cape, his friend snorts under his breath but Jimin can hear him perfectly.

“Horrendous,” Taehyung comments, scoffing at the guy that’s too preoccupied with a girl clinging to his side dressed as something both of them can’t recognize. “Let’s go, I’m hungry.” he grins, licking his bottom lip before they make their way into the huge house full of drunk people.

It’ll be hard to find someone sober or not drunk enough, Jimin thinks while his eyes scan the entire room.

“Jimin-ah,” Taehyung slaps his hands over Jimin’s shoulders while he clutches them but his friend barely reacts, already used to Taehyung's rough hands and strength. “Try to have fun.”

Jimin rolls his eyes, still looking around to map out the whole room almost as if he’s waiting for something to happen. He knows nothing will, none of these people are ready for tonight and are completely clueless. Sometimes, he wonders how it’d feel like to just let loose and drink alcohol like every other person here. Loud rap music boosts against the walls, barely good enough music to dance to, but it seems nobody cares about that and dance no matter how ridiculous they look. A group of young girls pass by them, one in particular eyeing Taehyung as she winks at him, giving him a hint that even she doesn’t know about.

“Well, that’s my cue,” Taehyung grins, slapping Jimin’s shoulder with enthusiasm from receiving attention even though he barely came in. “Two hours?” he asks, slowly backing away from Jimin’s figure who responds with a short but firm nod.

Sighing, with Taehyung no longer in sight, he forces his legs to move through the crowd which is just bunch of drunk college students. It’s hard to blend, especially if he’s the only one sober out of everyone. He walks through the house, not particularly knowing where he’s going since he has no idea where he is. This is his first time here — probably last too. They never come back, not even once. They always just move on and plan things together, with Taehyung. Somehow, his legs lead him to a kitchen, less preoccupied room with an exception since there are still some people sucking their mouths off. Jimin’s nose scrunches in a slight disgust at the smell of alcohol, knowing that it’s just the picky side of him.

Taehyung had been in charge of tonight’s plans, it makes sense this plan sucks. Jimin doesn’t like it here but it’ll have to do. His sharp eyes dance across the room, nose softly sniffling as a sweet scent fills it and then he sees something. Something that looks much more interesting than anything he could’ve seen here so far.

You.

In other scenarios, you’d probably spend your Friday night differently than in a frat house full of people you don’t know. That wouldn’t even be such a bad thing, if your friend didn’t bail on you because her ex wanted to talk. You’re not mad, you’re just annoyed that you’ve been standing here for the past fifteen minutes watching couples make out, while third guy tried flirt with you. May you add, completely wasted where you could smell the alcohol on their breath. That’s enough to make you not interested and disgusted at the same time. When another guy dressed like Joker tries to talk to you, you ignore him and tell him to fuck off. You’re not rude, not all the time. But it’s only natural of you to act this way, especially when you let them know you’re not interested and they still keep trying. It’s like it pushes them to be even more eager to try to win you over. Well, you’re not some trophy and drunk enough to do that.

The guy gives you an ugly frown, visibly displeased by your choice of words but luckily he leaves you alone and your heart slowly calms down. You don’t know what drunk men are capable of, but you get the idea. You need to be careful either way. Not drinking any drink from strangers and not provoke anyone who's drunk, even if it’s standing up for yourself. Those are the rules you need to keep reminding yourself, especially in this place where alcohol clouds most people's judgement and mind. 

Ah fuck, tonight is supposed to be fun.

“Playing hard to get?”

Your head whips at the soft voice, completely contrasting with the awful music and people’s chattering drunken nonsense. Mouth opening in a mere shock, you’re met with a guy you’ve never seen before which isn’t that weird since you barely know anyone here. But you’d surely remember him, if you ever met him. It’s safe to say, he’s probably the hottest guy you’ve ever seen and looked your way. His blond hair is parted in the middle, swiped back as this particular hairstyle shows his sharp jaw but soft features. One of the most eye catching features are those thick lips, looking juicy and soft, like two pillows and the most delicious desert. And you can’t fucking believe you’re gushing over some stranger but you’re surely not done yet. His eyes are sharp and there’s a weird glint in them, maybe it's because of the orangey–red shade they hold. Black leather jacket hugs his frame along with, what seems like a casual white shirt underneath, and a great fit black jeans. You wonder what kind of mask he’s wearing, but then he grins at you and shows you his white teeth. Two sharp fangs poke his bottom lip, making you almost jump in surprise but you sigh in relief.

He seems to know you were just checking him out, judging by the slight smirk he’s trying to hide while he makes his way over to you.

“Just not interested.” you reply, deciding it’s better to find your own voice rather than to gawk at this sex god.

“I don’t blame you,” he speaks, your eyes flickering to his. There’s something that makes your heart skip a beat, maybe it’s his alluring eyes that seems to know everything. As if he could tell you’re mentally screaming at his hotness. “Young guys can be... very persistent and act upon their hormones.”

You snort, placing a hand over your mouth as you start giggling at his choice of words. “You can say it. They’re just horny and looking for sex.”

He smiles, tracing a tongue over his lower lip as his steps come to a halt just a few inches before you. He looks even more heartbreaking from up close. The lightning is shitty but there’s not an inch of flaw on his soft glass skin, he looks slightly more on the pale side, but that has to be the make up. At least he hadn’t overdid it like you’ve seen some other guys. And those eyes... what kind of lenses are they?

“You’re right, they can be like that.” he agrees, still sporting that secretive smirk adorning both his eyes and lips.

You snicker, causing his brow to raise in a mere confusion. “So, what? You’re not one of them?”

There’s no way such a handsome guy wouldn’t use his charms to get the best out of it. He said it himself, young guys are horny just like most girls. It’s not like you judge him for it, he can do whatever he wants as long as he’s respectful to others and doesn’t cross any boundaries.

“I’m certainly not,” he says, voice lacking of that sweet yet mysterious tone he used before. There’s something that flickers behind his eyes but it’s gone before you can dwell what it really was. “I didn’t come here to have sex.”

You’re surprised by his bluntness, not expecting him being so blunt all of a sudden, especially about that sex part since he basically ran his way around the topic of guys being horny and wanting to have sex. But you like it, even though you can’t bring yourself to grin like you want to, not when he’s staring at you with gaze darkening.

“Why did you come here for then?” you ask quietly, eyes searching for any kind of emotion or something that could give you a better glimpse inside of his mind.

There’s something about him. He’s mysterious, hiding something and you’re sure it’s just a part of his personality. Either way, it makes him even hotter and you’d drop onto your knees for this man. But there’s your dignity in the way and somehow, you’re glad about that. You’re not one to have a meaningless one night stand. Not that he’d probably want or care to have one with you.

It’s getting awkward, the silence between you two as he complements about his answer causing you to play with the hem of your stupid dress that aren’t even yours. But then something clicks inside of him and he smiles.

“To have fun.”

“Good luck with that.” you murmur, sarcasm lacing in your tone because you can’t believe Yeri just went after her ex leaving you ‘socializing’ (as she called it) with total strangers. Drunk strangers.

You don’t expect the hot stranger to hear you, your voice muffled by the loud music mainly, but he does when a deep chuckle erupts past his lips.

“Why’s that?”

“If you didn’t come here to have sex or get drunk, I don’t think you’ll have fun. Look at everyone.” you chuckle, arms motioning around you to prove your point.

He doesn’t, his eyes stay solely on you but you’re too busy being sarcastic and still bitter about this party to properly register that.

Jimin isn’t stupid. He knows how these parties work. Where’s alcohol, there’s a big urge to have sex and it proves to be right when everyone’s kissing or dancing which mainly leads to the sex itself.

“I take it you’re not here willingly.” he speaks up, eyes dropping towards your mouth where a fake blood is smeared in the corner of your lips.

It’s supposed to add a little bit of horror detail to your look, but you’re far from that.

“Debatable. My friend had decided to invite me at the last minute and now she ditched me because of her ex. Honestly, the guy is a total prick, I don’t know why she keeps running after him.” you explain, scoffing as you cross your arms over your chest.

Jimin reacts with a low chuckle, slowly licking his bottom lip before he takes a deep breath. It’s interesting to watch him, there’s something about him that you can’t quite put your finger on.

You wouldn’t tell Yeri’s business to just some stranger, or anyone, but maybe it’s those two shots of soju that let your mouth on the loose. He doesn’t know her anyway and you’re too annoyed to care, even though you do feel a pang of guilt.

“What are you doing here? Besides, to have fun here. Did you come here alone?”

Great, Y/N. Now you sound noisy making it sound like you’re asking if he has a girlfriend. Did you come here alone is a totally straightforward question, a very bad pickup line usually guys use. You’ve no idea why you just asked that. However, Jimin doesn’t seem to mind and even though, his lips quirk in a sly smirk and you act like you haven’t noticed, he shakes his head to give you an answer.

“My friend was particularly interested in this party.”

He doesn’t lie, it’s true. Taehyung did persuade Jimin to come to this one.

“Oh, so you were dragged into this like me,” you chuckle.

He isn’t, but he stays quiet.

“I wish she’d tell me sooner than four hours before the party had started. I wasn’t prepared, I didn’t even get to shop for my Halloween look and ended up with Yeri’s costume from last year. God knows what these dresses have been through.”

The incredibly handsome stranger laughs, like truly laughs and it’s the most beautiful sound ever. It makes you grin without even noticing.

“I do think you make a perfect mixture of spooky and ravishing nurse.”

Yeah, Yeri’s costume last year was a nurse but you put your own thought into it and put some fake blood in the corner of your lips and the top of your cheekbone. There’s some of it on your collarbone and arm just to make it more ‘scary’ but it’s just a huge fail. The dress is short, luckily not dangerously short for you to feel uncomfortable in them. You’re not even sure if this is a Halloween costume. Yeri looks like the type of girl to like foreplay, maybe she used it with her ex. Oh fuck, you can’t think about that.

His compliment completely blows all your thoughts out, your heart picking a pace as for the first time, your facade slowly falls down and you blush. Did he just called you hot?

“Thanks,” you grin, “Although, I think this costume is shitty it’s still better than being dressed as Harley.”

“Harley?” he asks, cocking his head to the side.

You stare at him, watching his confused gaze before something flickers in his eyes and he just stares at you.

Well, not everyone had seen Suicide Squad.

“From the movie? Suicide Squad? Harley and Joker? They’re this lunatic couple and everyone’s been wearing their costumes for the past... three years, is it? I don’t even know but it’s so cliché. I think I saw four Jokers on my way to the bathroom. Don’t get me started on Harley.” you roll your eyes, leaning yourself against the kitchen counter that’s behind you.

The two of you just stand in silence for a couple of seconds, and you almost think it’s awkward even though there’s not an awkward atmosphere and you’re just standing in a comfortable silence.

“So, vampire, huh?” you fill the silence after a moment, catching his attention as he watches you with a serious look. “Not to be an asshole, but that’s an overused costume as well.” you add, wondering if you’re getting too comfortable with this stranger.

But he’s probably the most normal and sober guy you stumbled upon, even if he’s the one who approached you. There’s something odd about him, but that’s just because he’s not like one of those drunk assholes trying to get you into one of the rooms upstairs. He’s not rude, disrespectful and drunk and that’s all that matters for you to feel comfortable talking to him.

His features relax and he lets out a breathy chuckle, showing his fangs. “Their costumes don’t do the justice.” he comments, eyes watching one of the guy passing by who’s got vampire costume which makes you snort. 

Overused, like you said.

“They do look cheap,” you comment, giggling. “Isn’t it uncomfortable to talk with those?”

He looks at you with confusion, mouth opening in realization when you point at your teeth to explain.

“No.”

It comes out short, surprisingly deep and serious and for a moment, it looks like he wants to say something else but decides not to when he closes his mouth.

“You look believeable, though.”

“I do, don’t I?” he chuckles, and your body relaxes when all the seriousness is gone.

“Your skin is pale, not covered in that awful white color and your eyes... wow, those lenses look beautiful. It must’ve been an expensive costume.” you tell him, head leaning towards him as you study his eyes.

They’re almost deep red. Weren’t they more orange before? The lightening is shitty and honestly, you’re too busy inspecting the beauty and uniqueness of his eyes.

He looks stunned, and it looks like he stopped breathing for a moment when you lean closer to him to study his eyes and face. He closes his mouth, not letting you see the fangs hiding underneath those plump lips and even though they’re slightly poking, you can’t see much. He’s dressed normally, not wearing some awful costume. He’s done the minimum with his costume but he can easily win as the vampire of this party. It’s not too much, decent enough to make people stop and praise his costume if they had the chance to be face to face with him.

“I’m Jimin.” he decides to say instead, not even showing his gratitude from your compliment but you ignore it.

It was more of a loud thought anyway. You’re distracted again, this time by his name.

Jimin.

Fuck, even his name is beautiful.

“Y/N,” you tell him, giving him a smile which you hide by taking a sip of your drink.

He watches you, eyes scanning your lips before they move down to your throat as you gulp. You’re too focused watching people dance to notice the way he licks his lips and gulps.

“So, are you studying here?”

His eyes shoot up, your voice catching his attention once again before he thinks through your question. It’s weird how long he’s taking to actually answer, it’s quite simple question that's got a simple answer.

“No,”

That’s it? Just no?

He must’ve noticed the faint frown that settles on your face before he gives you a little quirk of his lips, those plump lips stretching to a handsome smile that once again gets all your attention.

“Are you?”

“Huh?” you blurt out, embarrassed how quick that flew out of your mouth.

You’re even more embarrassed, your cheeks slowly tinting into a red color when he chuckles lowly under his breath, completely aware of your lack of attention because all of it was focused on his goddamn smirk.

“Are you studying here?” he asks, not hiding that amused smirk that slowly settles into a soft smile that encourages you to answer.

“Yeah,” you smile, “psychology.”

“Are you a future psychologist?” he asks, a glint of teasing in his tone but there’s a curiosity lacing on his soft pale features.

How did he guess that?

“Maybe?” you chuckle, poking your inner cheek with a tongue. “I thought that’s what I want to be in the future, growing up it used to be my dream.” you tell him honestly.

You’ve no idea why you’re so honest and talkative with a complete stranger. Even though you haven’t exposed anything too personal about yourself, it feels very simple to talk to Jimin. He holds this calm aura around him that makes you want to tell him your deepest secrets without you feeling guilty about it the next morning.

“Used to? It’s not anymore?” he asks, cocking his head innocently but you know he’s not stupid and knows what your words meant very well.

For some reason, it seems like he really wants to talk to you and urges you to talk more. He seems interested in you. Not seeing you as a snack and walking vagina, but maybe just someone he wants to talk with because he’s been dragged into this party just like you have. That’s one thing you’ve in common.

“Do you really wanna hear my heartbreaking life story?” you tease him, chuckling when the corner of his lips quirk up once again as he gives you a final nod.

“I’m quite intrigued.” he simply says, your heart skipping a beat for some reason and almost as if he could hear it, he lifts his eyebrow in a provocative and cocky manner.

“Will you tell me yours?” you ask in return, cocking your brow at him which makes him smile.

“Depends on how interesting yours will be.” he says, your lips set into a straight line before you purse them and give him a long sigh.

“It’s nothing drastic. I just feel like it’s not what I wanna do anymore, the worst thing of it all is that I’ve no idea what I wanna do in the first place. But it’d be a good job for me, something I need. It pays well and maybe, it’ll be more fun than I think it is right now. All I can think about is my dad and just the fact that I need to keep going. Life sucks, right?” you chuckle, trying to ease the sudden serious and saddened tone you had.

Jimin is not a person who gets bluffed easily but he acts like he hadn’t noticed anything.

“Your dad?” he asks, slowly watching your reaction as if he’s waiting for you to tell him some drastic news about your father.

“It’s just me and my dad. He’s got a huge loan for the next couple of years and I’m trying to help him, but the part-time jobs just aren’t enough. When I finish college, I’ll be able to find a better job and help him with that. He deserves it and that’s what keeps me going, y’know? I need to pay him back for taking care of me. But it’s okay, I just can’t wait until there’s no loan over our heads. I came to the conclusion that life can be happy and fun, even if there are things that suck.” you explain, noticing how interested he seems to be with your words, sinking all of the information you just gave him.

Despite how sad you seemed to be talking about your family, Jimin notices that you’re staying positive no matter what exactly happened in your life and what you haven’t told him. And that you’ve a goal, purpose you want to fill and probably a bigger heart that you're letting show to others. Maybe he’s wrong, it doesn’t have to be this way. He doesn’t know you. But it’s not right to think that it’s only you. Every person in this house, or even in the entire world, has something they want to accomplish. Dreams, goals and all of that. Maybe some of them don’t know it yet, they’re lost but that’s what life is for. To let them figure it out. 

“That’s very nice of you.” he says, surprising you how serious and soft he sounds at the same time.

“But what about you? What is your life story?” you ask, wanting to change the topic because your life being discussed when you’ve had a few shots isn’t a good idea. Few more and you’d be probably bawling your eyes out just because you get emotional easily, especially if alcohol is involved.

“It doesn’t matter,” he chuckles, “It’s not interesting anyway.”

You don’t hide the disappointment that settles on your face, causing your lips to pout which makes him scrunch his nose cutely. What a shame, you really wanted to get to know him more. It’s like he’s putting distance between you two, keeping a safe distance but still wanting to be in your presence. He’s confusing you.

“But I told you mine.” you pout, mumbling under your breath like a child that just lost a game.

It’s comical, how you’re dressed in a sexy nurse costume and pouting just because you’re dissapointed. For the first time since being here, he feels unsure and actually stops for a second as you see his eyes dance between yours.

“My parents are dead. And I wish I could’ve made them proud like you’re making your dad.” he says, completely serious as you gape at him with an open mouth.

Is he serious? You don’t know him, his reactions are mysterious and despite him talking about his dead parents, he looks too serious and doesn’t show any sadness.

“I-I’m s--“

“Don’t,” he stops you, voice rough as he coughs and tries to mask his all of a sudden unfriendly tone.

It makes you speechless and actually bad for pressuring him into telling you more. Although, you’re not sure if that can be called pressuring.

“It’s been a long time since they’re not here. I’ve had time to process it.” he explains, hand brushing through his golden locks while you watch them bounce right back into its place.

You don’t ask how long they’re dead, or anything about them because it’s not your place to be curious about that. If you knew sooner about them not being alive, you wouldn’t even show him how disappointed you were of not hearing his shortened version of life story.

All you can give him is a slight nod, awkwardly glancing at your heels that, of course are borrowed from Yeri. Remembering that there's still almost a full bottle of soju that you snatched for yourself behind you, you turn around and pour yourself a shot as you glance at Jimin. He's staring at you, attentively paying attention to your face, as you give him a crooked smile.

“You want some?” 

“No.” he answers, causing you to shrug as you drink the shot in one go, weirded out by the expression he gives you. It almost looks like he's glaring at you for drinking and it makes you give him a dumbfounded look.

“Aren't you thirsty?” you ask, his jaw clenching before he allows himself to relax and a low chuckle comes out of his mouth. 

“You've no idea,” he grins, taking a step closer to you as he hovers over you, cornering you while your lower back digs into the kitchen counter. 

Your eyes are big, staring at him in a complete shock by his sudden move but you can't move away. Your whole body is frozen, staring into his red eyes that stare right back into yours as if he's looking for something in them. His own hands lean against the kitchen counter right beside your waist, almost touching you while your heart trembles with excitement. And then when you think it can't get worse, he actually leans his face closer to yours as he takes a sniff of you. He hums at your scent, your cheeks flaring both in embarrassment and praise, mentally clapping yourself on the shoulder for choosing that expensive Yves Saint Laurent perfume you got from Yeri last Christmas. You've always saved it for special occasions, and even though you don't think of this party as anything special, you're glad you've listened to your own guts and used it. Let's just ignore the fact that you used it because you were counting on sweating, knowing the strong perfume will make you smell amazing either way. 

He pulls slightly back, your noses almost touching as you can smell his own cologne, mixed with something that smells like mint. You don't even blink, not allowing yourself to budge as he gives you a tiny smirk. 

“I'm particularly thirsty for something else.” he tells you silently, his voice getting a few octaves deeper but yet sounding calm and soft.

Your breath gets caught in your throat, the huge lump there almost uncomfortable, as you stare at him with still the same shock. Gulping, you blink a few times as you wonder what the hell just happened. 

You should be mad because after all, he lied to you. He told you he's not here for sex, yet he implied something erotic and suggestive with a simple sentence that rolled off his tongue so easily and elegantly, but that's not the worst part. The worst part – that you're not proud of – is that you like it and you can feel yourself pressing your thighs together. This had never happened before. No guy could made your body hot without even touching you, and you wouldn't be so thirsty too for someone you only know by their first name. 

“I thought you didn't come here for sex.” you manage to speak up, successfully without stuttering or sounding too nervous, although confusion and the slightest tremble in your voice is audible even to you. 

“I didn't,” he confirms, nodding but not moving an inch from you. Without taking your eyes off him, you slowly blink as you watch him lick his lips. “But you look irresistible to my eyes.” he says simply, slowly reaching for the strand of your hair as he twirls it around his index finger. 

He's not touching you fully, and unfortunately you can't quite feel his touch through your hair because even now, he delicately touches your hair like you're a fragile doll that may break.

“Then, why don't you do something?” you surprise yourself, not believing something like that just left your mouth. You would never say something like this to a stranger, no matter how handsome and freaking hot he is. But this is Jimin, it seems like everything is different with him. 

And he laughs. He actually laughs like you've just told him a funny joke, and all you can do is stare at him like he just lost his mind. Is he just playing with you? Was he testing you? Before your crazy thoughts and theories could swarm your already confused mind, something else catches your attention that makes a prominent frown adorn your features. This doesn't get unnoticed by Jimin, his laughter dying down as he realizes where your eyes and attention are focused onto. 

There are no longer any fangs poking out of his mouth, and you watch something flicker behind those red orbs that seem to glow in the gloomy lightning.

“What do you want me to do?” he asks, ignoring your look of confusion and curiosity that still lingers in your eyes that don't look away from his mouth just yet. 

“Where are your--”

“Took them off,” he cuts you off, letting go of your hair. “Now, be a good girl and answer my question.” he hums, inching closer to you as you hold your breath. 

“What do you want to do?” you ask instead, getting a breathy chuckle from him. You're not sure whether it's because of your question or because you purposely avoided answering his. 

“You wouldn't wanna know,” he chuckles, eyes dropping down to your lips that are already nibbling on your bottom lip. “It'll bleed if you keep bitting on it.” he comments, licking his own. 

“What, are you scared of blood?” you joke, releasing your mouth that seemed to get his attention, before the mention of blood causes him to snap those red eyes to yours. 

“Not in the slightest,” he smirks, for whatever reason but it shoots butterflies straight to your stomach. “Are you?” he cocks his head to the side, reminding you of a snake that eyes its prey. Or some predator that has some fun with its prey before they kill it. 

Fuck, you shouldn't have watched that horror movie Yeri suggested yesterday. 

“Of what? Blood or you?” you find the courage to ask, raising a brow at him as you eye his from up and down. 

He smirks, cocking his brow at you. “You tell me. Are you scared of me?”

Maybe you should be. No one has ever approached you, talked to you or given you this kind of attention before. This is a completely new territory that you're tiptoeing around, and it does give you some kind of thrill. Maybe it's because your life is boring and Jimin summons a new temptation that you've never felt before. There could be hundreds of reasons why you feel this way or what you should feel instead, but you can't bother yourself to think about it any longer. Because instead of feeling any fear towards the new stranger that has angelic features and voice, and with some kind of darkness that he's hiding, you feel yourself getting more interested and temped. In this case, he's like a forbidden fruit for you. 

“No,” you reply confidently, head held high as you grin. “Should I be?” 

This constant teasing and the lack of touch just sets a flame of temptation inside you that slowly drives you insane. 

“Maybe,” he says, tips of his fingers reaching for your dress as he plays with the hem of it, fingers dancing dangerously at the top of your breasts. “You're the one who's gripping the kitchen counter for your dear life.” he teases, your eyes shooting to your hands that in fact, are gripping the corner so tightly that they turn white. 

Embarrassingly, you let it go as you cross your hands over the chest to make yourself appear more confident, trying to mask the way your heart thumps loudly against your chest.

“That doesn't mean I'm scared.” you tell him, indirectly suggesting that there may be another reason why you appear to be so tense. 

Judging by the tiny and already known smirk that slowly stretches across those beautiful and thick lips, Jimin confirms that he knew way before you even said it out loud. No matter how many times you seem to outrun him, he's always two steps ahead of you, having a prepared answer. 

“What it could mean, then?” he asks lowly, feigning an incomprehensibility that this time – you see and are prepared for.

“Many things.” you gulp, breath hitching when the tip of his finger slightly touches your skin. It's short-lived and almost unrecognizable, but it still makes you shiver over the fact he's so close touching the top of your breasts. 

In other scenarios, you wouldn't let anyone this near to you, nor someone almost touching your breasts that are covered in a costume dress.

“Care to share, my love?”

The new petname shoots excitement straight to your body, your cheeks flaring pink as you look away from him for a moment. You know he's aware of your reaction and how that little petname affected you, but you remain confident as you stare right back at him. 

“I think you get the idea.”

In no way in hell, you'd ever tell him how much you wish to be fucked by him. Those sinful thoughts have to stay in your head, and even if you're not saying them loud like he wants you to, you know he's smart enough to get the idea. 

“Tell me.” he presses, fingers playing with the top buttons of your costume that you can't unfortunately feel that much, except the tiny pressure he puts on them by playing with it. 

“Jimin...” you whine, causing him to grin cheekily at you. For a moment, it looks like he lost that dark and mysterious aura. “Why won't you kiss me?”

You're done playing this game, your patience is slowly dying as you wish to feel his lips against yours. Even just for a second.

“Because you never asked me to,” he answers simply, surprising you by his diplomatic answer that sounds nothing but truthful. 

“If I ask you to,” Oh fuck, this is embarrassing. He's doing this purposely, he wants you to make the first move. You feel like his goal is to make you desperate for him, which he didn't have to do for long. You don't get it. 

“Will you kiss me?” you ask quietly, eyes searching his once again. 

“Mhm,” he confirms. “If that's what you want.” 

First of all, you're surprised that he's more interested in your own interest and consent, instead to taking the first chance of your attention and weakness for himself. And there's a chance that you were wrong. Maybe he hadn't been doing this to push you to make the first move, or to enjoy how you're squirming underneath his hovering figure. All he wanted this whole time has been your consent. Second of all, it makes him fucking attractive for doing so and no matter what the real reason is, you're willing to risk it all for this man. 

“Jimin,” you tell him, voice strained and raspy. “Kiss me.”

For all you know, he could be playing with you this whole time and he doesn't have to be interested in you. Again, Jimin proves you that you're wrong and manages to surprise you all over again when in seconds, he pulls you closer to him and presses your lips together. Jimin seeks your lips hungrily, surprising you how rough and fast he is as if he was controlling himself this whole time. His hand is holding your head from the back for support, while the other one grabs your hip and squeezes it. Gasping, you shiver at the feeling of his tongue dancing across your bottom lip before he envelopes your mouth again. Your tongues move together, your own hands gripping his biceps that are hidden beneath his leather jacket. Jimin has a boosted energy, barely allowing you to breathe between the hungered kisses he's showering you with, and when you start desperately trying to catch your breath, you're forced to press against his chest firmly. It's hard, much harder than you've imagined and it takes an extra strength to actually make him budge, which primarily is the soft whimper that you let out against his mouth. He moves away, almost jumping away from you as he stares at you all frozen. 

He watches your chest move quickly, trying to catch the oxygen that your lungs are craving for. You put your own hand over your chest, chuckling when you feel your heart beating fast and hard. 

A group of drunk people stumble inside the kitchen, catching your attention as they laugh loudly, unable to walk properly as they're reaching for other bottles that are placed on the kitchen island. You weren't here alone this whole time, there are still a couple of people making out or talking, probably searching for somewhere more peaceful than the living room where the most people are. Considering this fact that someone might've seen you sucking off each other's faces, it doesn't bother you and it's probably mainly the fact they probably hadn't even noticed. 

The sudden drop of soju bottle that breaks instantly and stains the floor snaps you out of your thoughts, your gaze shifting to the drunk girl who starts giggling over the fact she's too drunk and clumsy to the point she just dropped a bottle. Now, there's soju smell lingering in the air and staining the floor with shards of glass laying there.

Turning to Jimin, you catch the sudden scrunch of his nose at the smell of alcohol which makes you giggle, even though you find it not so pleasing either. Taking a few steps towards him, you grab him by his wrist and drag him deeper into the house. Surprisingly, he allows you to drag him as he stares at the back of your head until you stop and push the door open. You're quick to turn the lock, making sure there's no one disturbing you as he finally notices where you brought him. The bathroom is decorated in deep blue, the same gloomy lightning that comes from the round mirror and creates a much more dark and intimate atmosphere. Standing in the safe distance, he watches you turn around to him and lean against the small counter where the sink is. 

His eyes turn dark, the red color almost unrecognizable as he keeps staring at you without making any move. Throwing out your insecurity, because this in fact is your first bold move that you've made on someone, you don't let it disturb you from your plan. Your palms sprawled against the bathroom counter, ass digging into the edge of it, you straighten yourself and cross your exposed legs. 

“Are you gonna just stand there and stare at me?” you ask, one hand flicking your hair over your shoulder which catches most of Jimin's attention and his eyes get big. The exposure of your nakedness, the vein that pokes beneath your beautiful and warm skin makes him react instantly. 

You yelp when he's suddenly in front of you, using the lack of your attention and the second of you closing your eyes to blink, he's gripping your face before he attacks your lips with his own, kissing you hungrily that he did the first time. Only this time, you're ready for the strength and intensity of his kisses, awaiting for his tongue that darts out into your mouth. You grip his jacket, trying to take it off but it's impossible with him holding you so close. Tugging onto the leather material, he gets your message and strips it off, tossing it carelessly onto the dirty floor. Your palms spread over his chest, feeling his hardened muscles that are surprisingly too hard. In an instant, you're turned around, hands gripping the sink as you feel Jimin's hands on your thighs, slowly disappearing underneath the skirt of your dress. You shiver, his hands cold against your heated skin as you look back at him as much as your current position allows you to.

Unfortunately, you get only a brief glance at Jimin who turns you around rather aggressively. From this position, you can barely see him in the reflection of the mirror but as he looks up, you're met with his red eyes that stare at you back. 

“What do you want?” he asks lowly, hands slowly caressing your ass cheeks that aren't covered by your panties, his nails grazing over the soft flesh. 

Thank God, you chose to wear sexy underwear – the only sexy underwear you own.

“You,” you breathe out, telling him the obvious answer that he probably just wanted to hear. “You.. Jimin.”

You hear his low hum before your panties are pushed aside and dress hiked up, enough to let his fingers replace the lacy material. As soon as the tip of his cold fingers meet your heat that's coated with your slickness, your breath hitches. He starts rubbing the area, making sure he does the same thing to your clit before he pushes two fingers in. You gasp, not expecting him to enter you all of a sudden, especially with two fingers that stretch you deliciously. It slightly burns, but your arousal that's used as a lube helps a lot and it makes it easier for him to get in. 

Jimin's surprised by your tightness, wondering when was the last time someone touched you while his red eyes flicker to your reflection to check your reaction. He's a monster, he shouldn't care if he's being too rough with you but for some reason he's curious to see how you react to his touch. A cocky smirk flickers on his lips when he sees your eyes closed and mouth open in delight. 

“You like that?” he whispers, mouth hovering over your ear as he takes another sniff of you. Do you really smell that good?

He presses his thumb against your clit, circling it when he feels you clenching around and that's why he adds another finger. You gasp, mumbling something incorrect to both your and his ears. Again, he just smirks at your lack of response and how fucked out you already seem to be. He barely had to do anything. 

Pulling your hips to him, he makes you arch for him with your ass pursed up almost dangerously close to his crotch. 

Fucking you with his fingers, he has no mercy on you and your loud pleas of slowing down. He doesn't know you, but it feels like he reads all the signs your body gives him and with you clenching around his three fingers, being a mess that barely stands on her own feet, he knows you're close. The pleasure gets too much, his palms slapping against your clit as he keeps fucking you is nothing you are prepared for. The orgasm and the chase after it gets too intense, no longer in your hands and with you being able to control it, you're cumming around his fingers, sucking them right in. He slows down, but still keeps a sloppy pace that fucks you through it. Your whole body burns with tingles of post-orgasm and if it weren't for your hands desperately clutching onto the sink, and Jimin's body behind you caging you in, you'd probably fall like a potato sack.

He pulls out his fingers, sounds of slurping leaving his mouth as he cleans them. Unfortunately for you, you've missed that devilish sight of him doing it. You pry your eyes open, slowly straightening yourself as you turn around to check the devil himself.

Just as expected, he's smirking at you, proudly staring at your flushed cheeks and the quick rise of your chest. You surprise him, clutching his shirt between your fingers before you pull him closer and connect your lips together. He lets you kiss him, hands wrapping around his neck and finally feeling up his skin more properly. You're surprised how cold he is, yet no hint of goosebumps cover his skin.

“You're so cold,” you comment, rubbing your hands over his forearms trying to warm him up.

Glancing back at him, you're surprised by the dumbfounded look he gives you before his mouth quirks up. “You wanna warm me up?” he asks, cocking his brow at you as your mouth salivates, your hands completely stopping.

“Yeah,” you answer, no idea why the fuck would you even answer that when you should just put yourself to action. The little act makes him chuckle, leaning closer to you as you hear him gulp.

You think he's about to kiss you, his lips close to the crook of your neck and you tilt your head to the side, to give him a better room for that. However, you're surprised when his mouth never makes an actual contact with your neck. You slightly tilt back, staring at his frozen state as you see his throat bob. 

“Jimin?” you ask, growing worried when he seems to be acting weird all of a sudden. “Are you okay?”

Your voice is muffled to his ears, he barely hears you as all he can focus is the way your blood pulses in your veins and the soft heartbeat of your heart. But you don't know that, all you can see is Jimin standing there gulping and not moving at all. It's until your hand makes contact with his cheek, your warm palm ready to envelop it but before you can even properly touch his skin, he's gripping your wrist at an extreme speed. You stare at him, almost jumping back from the sudden movement. 

“You scared me,” you chuckle, trying to ease the tension as he takes a step back. “Are you okay?”

“Yeah,” he answers nonchalantly, staring at you with those red eyes. “Now be a good girl and suck my cock.”

Your eyes almost bulge out of their sockets, surprised by the sudden change in his behavior and tone. He starts unbuckling his belt, your mouth salivating at the thought you're about to see his cock. It's been awhile since you gave a proper blowjob and although, you're not quite satisfied with your skills of giving one in the first place, you just can't wait to taste him. 

If Yeri could see you right now, she'd never believe that it's the same best friend that has always been opposed to one night stands.

Dropping onto your knees, your face is facing his growing bulge as you look up at him for permission. He chuckles, licking his bottom lip as he nods his head at you, silently telling you to get to it already. You put his jeans down, not entirely just enough to expose his casual black boxer briefs, as they stay wrapped around his mid-thighs. His boxer briefs are next, your fingers too eager to see him rather than to tease and play with him. Something tells you that Jimin is not the type to enjoy teasing. His erection spreads free, finally out of the material of his tight jeans, and it slaps against his clothed stomach that's hidden beneath the white shirt. 

You wish there was a better lightning and for a second, you contemplate whether to turn the main light on, just to fully appreciate his erected length. No matter what the lightning is, you notice how thick he is and a few veins that poke underneath the thin skin. From the light patch of hair to the red tip that's leaking with a little bit of pre-cum makes your mouth salivate like never before, and you make sure you gulp all of it before you can embarrass yourself. Not wasting any time, your hand curls around the base as you give him a testing squeeze which surprisingly, makes him barely react and when you glance up at him, he stares at you with dark eyes. 

Little do you know he needs your touch, he needs to distract himself from the thirst and hunger, and that dark voice inside his head that tells him to do something completely different, rather than have you on your knees and ready to take him.

As if you could hear his thoughts – which you can't and he knows that – he almost sighs in relief when you wrap your pretty red lips around his tip. It doesn't matter that your lipstick is completely smeared from Jimin's lips and his furious kisses. Sucking on it, you let the angry red tip glisten with your saliva before you start pumping him. Through hooded eyes, Jimin watches you licking a strip up his cock as you go back to sucking him off while pumping his hardened length, this time harder and quicker. Jimin's low grunts that occasionally leave his mouth encourages you to take him deeper, the tip of his cock almost hitting the back of your throat. Your eyes burn with tears but you blink them away, curling your tongue around the head of Jimin's cock. His hand grabs the back of your head, clutching your hair in his fist as he starts moving his hips. It hurts a little, he's putting too much pressure and strength into grabbing your hair and the roots that burn your skull. But with your own arousal between your legs, slowly dripping down your thighs and the undying lust that you feel towards Jimin, you've no time to complain. It adds another pinch of pleasure, a pleasure that makes you moan around his length and almost gag when he thrusts into your mouth. Surprisingly, you look up and you find him checking your reaction.

Your warm hand around his cock and even warmer mouth that's wrapped around him feels surprisingly nicer than he thought it'd be. He takes his time to notice your reddened cheeks that he can see even from up, and with the dim lightning his red eyes catch the line of saliva that's drooling out of your mouth. And he growls, he actually growls and pulls you from his cock in seconds, before he's pulling you up and if it weren't for his strong hold, you'd surely stumble how quick he got you up. He backs you into the bathroom counter, to your previous position before he fingered you, but this time you're face to face. Your ass is digging into the edge of the counter, although you don't seem to care. You're too focused staring at Jimin that clenches his jaw, suddenly bumping into you as he starts kissing you. Whimpering into his mouth, you're surprised when he easily lifts you up and gets you seated on the bathroom counter. However your yelp is muffled by his mouth, his hands pulling you close to the edge, dangerously close that you're clutching onto him, scared of a possible fall. But Jimin got you, his body is caging you and creates a barrier between you and the floor. 

Jimin's hand wrapped around his erected cock looks sinful, like nothing you've ever seen before, at least no one made it look so effortlessly hot. Your body almost trembles with the anticipation of feeling him inside of you, and you know it's coming because he starts pumping himself. Not even aware that you stretch your legs to give him a better space, plus giving him a view of the mess between your legs. He pulls you closer, nudging your thighs apart even more before his other hand moves your ruined panties more to the side. He gets a better view of your pulsating heat that's waiting just for him.

“What about a condom?” 

He stops, eyes flickering to yours as he stares at you with unreadable recognition. It's enough that you're about to have sex with some stranger, even though it's very hot and irresistible stranger, but you don't know him after all. Are you ready to risk it for him? The rational you mentally praises you for remembering such important detail before it could've been too late. 

“Don't have one,” he says through teeth, almost seeming to be annoyed that you stopped him.

Maybe you should grow offended or annoyed yourself by his reaction, but for some reason you don't. You just stare and wait for him to say something else. 

“You don't trust me?” There it is – the smirk comes back and makes an appearance on his thick lips again. 

“I don't know you.” you point out, cocking a brow at him.

“Yet, you're here sprawled for me ready to be fucked,” he chuckles lowly, your expression dropping as your eyes grow big. “I don't know you either, that's why we need to trust each other.” he says, but still doesn't move to do anything else. 

Your mind is screaming at you, telling you over and over again how a bad idea this is and that you'll regret it. There's no actual threat of disease of a potential pregnancy (even though, you've been taking birth control since your teenage years) but you don't know that. He can't exactly tell you without having to explain something that he doesn't even want to or has to explain.

“Hm? What's it gonna be?” he purrs, his hand cupping your jaw as he starts caressing your cheek with his thumb. “Are we gonna trust each other?”

In a way, you're aware he's coaxing you into agreeing and using your temptation by using his low and tempting tone, but you don't find yourself calling him out for it. You're speechless, not able to move your mouth and find your own voice, even though you're not sure what your answer is going to be. But then he's pulling away, taking your silence as an answer which kind of surprises you because you thought he really is coaxing you into agreeing. Before he can fully pull away, you wrap your legs around his frame and cage him. 

He opens his mouth staring at you as you can feel his hardened length touching the exposed skin of your thigh. 

“Fuck me, Jimin.” you tell him, meeting him in the middle as you both crash your lips together.

The kiss is heated, even more than ever before and you shiver when you feel his tip against your heat. He looks at you, checking one more time as you give him a nod before you crash your lips together again.

He needs you as his distraction but he's not an asshole to take you without your consent, or trying to control you.

With that, he pushes past your folds and enters you. You gasp, pressing your face into his shoulder as you bite onto him gently. He doesn't budge, not surprised by the feeling of your teeth dangerously poking him through the fabric of his shirt. He's pushing in, bottoming out before he's already pulling out just to thrust back in. Jimin has no patience, already getting to work as he starts fucking you. With each thrust, it gets easier to move inside of you as your cum and arousal helps him. You're surprised how good you're taking him, even though your walls do burn with the sudden penetration and the new feeling of his thick cock. Even the pace is going too fast, the top of his thighs slapping against the back of yours while his balls make contact with your ass. The bathroom is filled with sinful sounds of skin on skin slapping, and it coaxes you to clench around him repeatedly. You can't keep up with the animalistic and rustless pace he set, whimpering and moaning his name all over again with an occasional curse falling out of your lips. Jimin grunts are no longer silenced ones, although he seems to be controlling his voice much more.

“Fuck,” you moan, head tilting back as your hands are doing a poor job at trying to hold you in place. 

Jimin's hands are around your thighs, making sure your legs stay apart as he keeps fucking into you. You can feel sweat slowly dripping down your neck, even your ass getting sweaty from the contact of the bathroom counter.

“I'm--fuck, I'm close.” you gasp, clutching the edge even harder and before you can say something else, you're already cumming around him. “Ohhh, fuck, Jimin.” you moan out through your orgasm, his pace not slowing down even after you're done and gritting your teeth at the overstimulation.

His head falls into the crook of your neck, lips almost making contact with your skin as he starts shaking and grunting. You think he's close, that it's only a natural reaction of approaching orgasm and you're completely thrown back when he suddenly pulls away completely. His cock is out of you in a record time and as you blink, he's in the middle of the bathroom standing with his jeans and boxer briefs wrapped around his mid-thighs, along with still hardened cock that's coated with your cum. If the situation weren't so weird all of a sudden, you'd probably focus on the sight in front of you much more. 

You watch Jimin's features twist in an almost painful expression, his nose scrunching as his whole body shakes. It's nothing too drastic but just enough to notice by the way he's shivering and trying to control himself. He gulps a couple of times as well, seeming like he's in a pain. You've no idea what has just happened and you just stand there completely clueless, eyes big and mouth agape. 

“Are you okay?” you ask softly, wondering what the hell is wrong with him. 

You hop off the counter, ignoring how sensitive you're between your legs and how hard it feels like to be standing on your feet all of a sudden.

“Don't,” he warns you, voice raising as he outstretches his arm to keep you from coming closer. “Don't come any closer.” he says lowly, head held high as you can't see his face.

“What, why? What happened?” you ask worriedly, your eyes filled with worry and confusion at the same time. 

When you're about to take another step towards him, it's like he can sense it before you can even more your feet, his head snaps to you and he growls at you. 

“Fucking stay away.” he warns you again, almost yelling at you as you jump in fear.

The last thing he sees is your scared eyes before he focuses his gaze to the floor again. He can feel the veins starting to cracking up on his skin, showing what he really craves for. He can't let you see. With your heartbeat being the loudest melody in the room and your smell filling it too, he can't promise not to do something he doesn't want to. That was the whole purpose of tonight, the whole purpose of approaching you and talking to you. He has no idea what's happening to him and why can't he listen to what his mind is telling him to do. He's controlling himself and he knows if he stays any longer, you're not going to make it without any harm. 

And that's why he focuses his attention on something else, desperately listening to people slurring drunken nonsense and the loud music before something else catches his attention. It's not too much, just the only thing that helps with not focusing on your smell entirely. It's something no one else can hear, the whimpers and slurping sounds that could only mean one thing. 

You notice how he zones out, your hands pulling your dress down to have at least some kind of modesty as you eye the stranger in front of you. 

“J--”

His eyes snap to yours as he turns around. “You need to leave.”

“I-- what?” you blurt out, seeing him tucking himself back into the jeans. You ignore the feeling of disappointment that clouds your mind for a whole second, before you're back to confusingly staring at him. 

“I don't know wha--”

Taking two long steps, he's right in front of you before he grips your face tightly into his hands. You whimper at the strength staring into his dark orbs that shine like never before. 

“Get your friend and leave. You've to leave, right now.” 

The firmness in his voice doesn't go unnoticed by you, however it gets somewhere in the back of your mind as you stare at Jimin with big eyes. Painfully for you, he lets you go as he starts backing away from you but there's nothing you can do. You can't bring yourself to move, nor rush after him when he flicks the lock open and walks out of the bathroom. You stand there, your mind suddenly snapping into action as the only thing you can think about is getting Yeri. 

When Jimin makes it through the crowd, successfully hiding and blending with his surroundings, he stops and makes sure he has a great view of you walking out of the bathroom. He's watching you from the safe distance, seeing you trying to find your friend that seems to be nowhere in sight. When desperation is evident on your face since you've checked every room downstairs and you still can't find her, your legs lead you upstairs. He wishes he'd tell you to go alone, the longer you're staying... no, he doesn't care. 

His mind drifts away to the moment in the bathroom, where his long canines started growing and all he could think about was sinking them to your delicious neck.

He can hear your faint heartbeat but he doesn't allow himself to get closer, not even if you're already upstairs opening every door of each room to find your friend. And when he sees Taehyung with a satisfied grin and blood dripping down his chin nearing him, it makes Jimin think only one thing. None of these people are aware of the liquid dripping down his friend's chin, thinking that it's just another fake blood even if Jimin can smell the metal scent from miles away.

You're growing annoyed when the third room you open, there's still no sight of Yeri but some drunk couples having sex or smoking weed. You scrunch your nose in disgust, wondering if these people don't know what locks are. As you're nearing another room, you just hope there are no naked people and any possible butts that you'll be seeing before you take the doorknob into your hands. 

But nothing could ever prepare you for the sight behind that door. 

The room is dark, the street lights create at least some kind of lightning but you still decide to turn up the lights. It happens in seconds. The first thing you recognize is the costume, the same one she proudly showed you this morning saying she'll be the hottest Black Widow. You stare at the horrific sight of the face of your friend which is almost unrecognizable. Her lifeless body is laying on a bed, blood trickling down her neck and staining beige sheets underneath her. Your piercing scream rings in your ears but you can't stop screaming from the horror sight in front of you. 

Jimin hears your screams, his eyes shifting towards the house as he starts the engine. 

“You killed her?” he asks, voice low as he starts the engine. 

“Y'know how I get,” Taehyung chuckles, wiping the remains of blood from his chin and mouth. “I was hungry.” 

Jimin grips the steering wheel tightly, stealing a last glance at the house and the party that slowly turns into chaos. That's why they never come back. They can't and he should've known his longtime friend would get one of his moods. Taehyung is crazy, much more dangerous than Jimin because he gets so into his own needs. 

“You didn't have to kill her.” Jimin points out, leaving the driveway while the house keeps getting further and further.

“I didn't have to, you're right. But I did,” he sighs pleasingly, patting his stomach as he makes himself comfortable in the passenger seat. “And she tasted fucking great.”

Jimin's jaw flexes, slowly growing irritated by his friend's decision to end someone's life again. He should've gotten used to it by now, but he can't never really process it. It's even weirder now that he knows that someone wasn't just someone. It was your best friend. 

And that night, almost everyone who attended that party had some regrets. And you've got many of them. 

You wish you'd pay more attention to Jimin. 

Like, how his eyes kept changing color. How cold his skin was, too unrealistically to be natural. Or one second, he flashed you with his sharp canines and the next one he didn't have any. How much he craved for you, but not the way you thought he was.

If you just paid attention, maybe your friend would be still alive. And maybe you'd be in her place and would never make it out alive, if it weren't for the stranger with red dark orbs that hunts you every night.

[incorrectbatfam]

For the vampier au: how do they each get turned?

The year is 1000 BCE. Ra’s and Talia Al Ghul rule the Persian empires as two of the first vampires in existence, existing largely in secret. They make it their goal to turn as many people over to their side as possible, whether by battle or biting. Biologically, Damian was born a vampire and they utilize some arcane magic to make him appear as a child forever, because even back then people knew that children were far better at getting their way than adults. Honed as a weapon for literally millenia, Damian Al Ghul practically becomes a cryptid in his own right. Villagers shared stories of people who saw the child and never being the same—or worse, never returning. The Al Ghuls were responsible for the most well-known vampires in history, including the famous Count Dracula.

The year is 800 BCE. At 200 years old, Damian was still considered very young for a vampire. He is sent on a mission to turn to their side a young lady who was practically viewed as a goddess by other women, and who aspired to become one of the greatest poets of all time. Talia dropped Damian off on the island of Lesbos. Faster than lightning, the child warrior swooped down and bit the legendary Sappho. Now an immortal, Sappho dedicated her eternity of free time to her passion for writing, where she composed her famous Ode To Aphrodite. Eventually she got bored of Greece, so she changed her appearance and set off exploring the greater Asian continent.

The year is 1206. Genghis Khan had conquered much of the world. Under the Mongol empire, it was as common for women to serve in army as men. One of Khan’s most distinguished fighters came from the Manchuria region. She was a mercenary for the army, a lone wolf. And though she found thrill in battle, she was lonely. And, as fate may have it, so was Sappho. They met in a village where the army was stationed and forged a tight-knit partnership. They laughed together, they fought together. And the thought of being separated was unimaginable. So when Sappho revealed herself to be a vampire, the Mongol warrior jumped at the chance to become one too. And so she was transformed with consent, and together they roamed the world in search for adventure.

The year is 1775. The two girls had heard of this supposed New World and the colonies Britain established. They wanted to see it for themselves. Changing their names and appearances to something more Anglican, Stephanie Brown and Cassandra Cain boarded a ship set for what would become modern-day New Jersey. Immediately they found a stark lack of immortals there and they didn’t want to be the only ones, so they set off on a biting spree, turning men, women, children, and even a few farm animals (two dogs, a cat, a cow, and a turkey) without care. One of these victims was an elderly English nobleman named Alfred Pennyworth. Cassandra took the animals under her wing, while Stephanie felt bad for Alfred because he seemed to have nobody around. So the girls “adopted” Alfred as their grandfather so he wouldn’t be lonely either. 

The year is 1871. Haly’s Circus was the most popular traveling show during Europe’s Industrial Age. Disguised as mother and child laborers working behind the scenes, Damian and Talia were on the lookout for new potential soldiers. And who would make a more perfect killer than the swift, agile Flying Graysons? Talia tried persuading John and Mary nicely, using Damian’s adorable boyish face, and they did give in. At least, at first. But within a few months of John, Mary, and Richard being turned, the parents changed their mind. They wanted nothing to do with Ra’s Al Ghul’s agenda and threatened to expose the vampires to the world. Talia had no choice but to get rid of them. She paid a lower-level mortal criminal to rig the ropes and douse the trapezes in holy water, which would lead to the downfall of John and Mary. The press reported it as a tragic accident. Alfred, who was at the circus during his holiday when it happened, couldn’t help but notice the burn marks on their hands. He chalked it up to coincidence or a prior unrelated injury in the end

The year is 1920. All that the grieving Richard Grayson wanted was to get away from the ghost of his past. He traveled to America, settling in the subpar city of Gotham, New Jersey. As much as he wanted to drink his troubles away, it was just his luck that he arrived at the beginning of Prohibition. His apartment was near a speakeasy, though, so he frequented that. The underground bar itself was owned by mob boss Jason Todd, who was notorious for brandishing guns and picking drunken fights—and winning all of them. But his streak would end when he had one too many glasses of moonshine and challenged an unwilling Richard Grayson to a fistfight. “What, you gonna back out, ya little dick?” Jason taunted. The former Flying Grayson himself wasn’t in the most sober state ever, so after some convincing and people placing betting money on the table, they took up the challenge. It was the roughest fight that bar had ever seen, and in a final act of self-defense, Richard bit Jason. (Granted, it wasn’t in the neck, but a bite was a bite). Jason becoming vampire wasn’t the worst consequence. No, it the older one being stuck with a terrible nickname: Dick.

The year was 1965. One of Ra’s fortune tellers predicted an influx of young soldiers arriving in Vietnam before war was even declared, and Ra’s sent his grandson to a rural village in the country undercover to find more recruits as the League of Assassins’ influence was diminishing. The environment of thick, bushy jungles worked in Damian’s favor as he was able to hide and strike on French and U.S. soldiers. He even managed to turn all but two members of a New Jersey infantry. Later on, the government reported one of the drafted soldiers, Duke Thomas, as missing, but in reality the young man went into hiding with two other vampire soldiers on his squad. And it was a reasonable move—mass media was on the rise and the last thing anyone needed was vampires being exposed as real to the public. Not only that, but Duke displayed abilities that the other two didn’t have, likely attributed to the combined effects of vampire magic and chemical agents like Napalm used at the time, and neither General Grayson nor Lieutenant Todd knew what to make of it.

The year was 1999. A teenage Tim Drake was out on a late-night grocery run to get more supplies, because 2000 was in just a few months and everyone was preparing for the supposed end of the world. He made the grave mistake of taking a shortcut through Crime Alley in an effort to get home on time, and was bitten in the leg by a “homeless” kid who seemed to appear out of nowhere before scurrying off. He didn’t experience anything strange for the next few years. He got plenty of sunburns, but he burned easily even before the incident. He kept his bedroom dark and stayed awake all night, but so did a lot of teenagers during that grunge/post-punk era. Silver felt weird, which he brushed off as an allergy. He avoided churches but that was because religion was never his thing. He craved red meat and avoided garlic, but hey, people had their likes and dislikes. It wasn’t until about five years later, when Tim realized he hadn’t aged a day, that he considered doing some research. 

The year was 2019. Bruce Wayne was at one of his famous Wayne Enterprises gala on New Year’s when he met a stunningly beautiful woman named Talia. She slipped a little something into his drink when he wasn’t looking. Bruce couldn’t remember what happened after that, only waking up with a killer hangover and strange hickey on his neck. He had been Batman for a while now, and when he started experiencing unexplainable things he sought the help of the magician Zatanna, who found out that somebody turned him into a vampire. If he wasn’t brooding before, he definitely was now, and it didn’t help that the butler was a smartass. Alfred revealed to Bruce that he had been a vampire the whole time, looking over the Wayne family since Thomas’s father’s father, because the wealthy Waynes made easy targets for the supernatural. In an attempt to make Bruce feel less alone, Alfred invited Stephanie and Cassandra over for dinner (“Alfred, great to see you again! It’s been, like, a hundred years!”). It was over dinner that Bruce asked questions and the older vampires told their stories, and Alfred offhandedly mentioned something about Haly’s Circus that caught Bruce’s attention. Fresh burn marks from touching a trapeze? Something didn’t seem right. Though the case was over a century old, Bruce did some searching on the Batcomputer and found too many discrepancies in the Flying Grayson case for it to be just a regular accident. With Stephanie and Cassandra’s help, Bruce traced the parents’ deaths back to the League of Assassins. But one new questioned surfaced after all this: what happened to Richard? That question would be answered a few weeks later when Bruce dug up another cold case: a file about an MIA Vietnam War soldier from Gotham, Duke Thomas. He tracked down Duke’s whereabouts, and it turned out he was hiding from the League of Assassins with two other missing people from history: the circus performer Richard Grayson and mobster Jason Todd. Bruce offered him the best damn thing in their eyes: sanctuary. He took all three of them under his bat wing and they joined his immortal crusade against Gotham crime. Some time later, Talia introduced Damian to Bruce under the guise that Damian was Bruce’s son, citing the night she met Bruce at the party. Damian only agreed to Talia’s infiltration plan because he was sick of how Ra’s treated him, like an object rather than a being. So although the paternity test came out negative, Bruce still insisted that Damian was his son and kept him. As for Tim Drake? His story is pretty much the same: deducing Batman and Nightwing’s identities and demanding to join them—classic Timmers move

[possiblyimbiassed]

The Lost Special?

Musings over possible implications of BBC Dracula

After obsessively watching all three episodes of BBC Dracula, I can’t help feeling I’ve got one of my suspicions, if not exactly confirmed, at least enhanced: that this Victorian old story, finally adapted into present time, might in fact be relevant to Mofftiss’ version of ACD’s short story The Lost Special. Maybe it is, maybe it isn’t, but since I can’t deny I do like ‘tin-hatting’, for now I choose to believe it is. ;)

(Continued under the cut)

As some of you guys already have expressed, I think BBC Dracula has BBC Sherlock written all over it. I believe this was obvious already from the setup; same authors, same producers, same broadcasters, same set designer, same format, three of the same actors including one of the writers, and even the same airing slot as BBC Sherlock. The Sherlock hints are sprinkled all over the two first episodes, which occur in the same Victorian time frame as ACD’s original Sherlock Holmes stories. This for example:

But the bringing of Bram Stoker’s old narrative into present time in the third episode (The Dark Compass) kind of sealed the deal for me. 

Suddenly we have Count Dracula sending text messages by smart phone to his victims:

 We have Dracula vomiting on the rug of a crime scene:

We have him storing body parts in the fridge! (X)

And this fridge scene is taking place while Dracula is watching a TV program with elephants on the Savannah, exclaiming “Look at her - so beautiful!”: 

Who is beautiful - the ‘Elephant in the Room’? It certainly feels like Mofftiss are stringing us along here, doesn’t it? ;)) But no; it’s the sun that Dracula admires as beautiful, we learn that in the show. The shining from the sun is a thing he thought he could never endure, but ultimately he learns that he actually can.

Same thing as Sherlock says about John Watson the distant suns in the sky in TGG:

Or about Sister Sentiment’s music in TFP:

Taking Dracula to modern time is something that the authors had expressly denied they would do. But they were lying of course, as is their usual MO. Exactly the same deception as they did with TAB, isn’t it? And as if this wouldn’t be enough, there’s a whole list of other modern Sherlock references, summarized by @gosherlocked​ (X). I’m sure there’s more, we just need some more time to find them. 

As I mentioned in this comment recently (X): The Lost Special (X) is a short story about a derailed, disappeared train that ACD wrote during the Great Hiatus (1898). It bears some typical Holmes-case mystery characteristics. And the anonymous person who in this story sends a letter to the train company, suggesting a way of solving the case, seems very much to be Holmes himself:

“It is one of the elementary principles of practical reasoning, that when the impossible has been eliminated the residuum, HOWEVER IMPROBABLE, must contain the truth. It is certain that the train left Kenyon Junction. It is certain that it did not reach Barton Moss. It is in the highest degree unlikely, but still possible, that it may have taken one of the seven available side lines. It is obviously impossible for a train to run where there are no rails, and, therefore, we may reduce our improbables to the three open lines, namely the Carnstock Iron Works, the Big Ben, and the Perseverance.”

(X). So this short story indeed looks like a Holmes story in disguise. But Sherlock Holmes’ name is never mentioned in The Lost Special and the storyteller is not John Watson. In this story the police did not act on this anonymous person’s advice. The truth wasn’t revealed until one of the perpetrators - a hired murderer who was threatened with execution years later - admitted that he had participated in derailing the train in question (X): “A conspiracy of men had temporarily re-attached the side track leading to the abandoned mine Heartsease just long enough for the train to go down to the mine, then pulled the tracks back up before they could be discovered.” To the broader audience, however - the Holmes readers - the character of Sherlock Holmes remained ‘dead’.

The wrapping up

One could say that The Lost Special both had and had not a satisfactory ending. Satisfactory because the truth was finally told and the mystery thus solved, but unsatisfactory because in spite of all the hints, the readers didn’t get to know anything more from Holmes. Not until years later (1903) when ACD actually did ‘resurrect’ him and continued the narrative of Sherlock Holmes with 33 more short stories. 

When Dracula finally ‘dies’ at the end of the BBC Dracula series, it’s not by being ‘staked’ or burnt to ashes with the sunlight as one would expect for a ‘monster’ like him. It’s by embracing the criticism of his most resilient but dying opponent: Zoe/Agatha Van Helsing (Mofftiss call her ‘Zagatha’ in an interview). She is dying from cancer, not from vampire bites. Dracula drinks her (to him) mortal blood and then ‘dies’ in her arms, basking in the sunlight (without burning) in a tender lovers’ embrace. 

Zagatha in BBC Dracula is criticizing the vampire for skulking in the shadows, being afraid of facing death. She says it will be his punishment to live on for eternity, while she is mortal and dying:

Seriously, this is so much ‘Buffy the Vampire Slayer that I can’t just... But Count Dracula re-writes Bram Stoker’s original story and opts for another solution: to ‘die’ willingly in the sunlight, together with Zagatha. And if dying is a metaphor for falling in love - as I believe it is in BBC Sherlock - this might have some important implications. I think Dracula and Zagatha here represent two sides of Sherlock that are finally allowed to merge; his Sentiment and his (Homo)sexuality.

Like The Lost Special, BBC Dracula is nicely wrapped up and ‘solved’. But we still don’t really know what happened with Count Dracula, because we don’t actually see him crumble into ashes like he did in Stoker’s canon, and like the other vampire who was ‘staked’ in the show - Lucy Westenra. But the episode is packed with Sherlock references, so...

But I can’t say for the life of me that S4 of BBC Sherlock brought a satisfactory ending for the Holmes narrative either; it’s not ‘wrapped up’ at all! John and Sherlock seem to live on for eternity as ‘best friends’, solving crimes in the heteronormative ‘legends’ preferred by Ghost!Mary’s voiceover. They are simply immortal, Un-Dead for ever - like a punishment? Wouldn’t it be far more satisfying if Sherlock Holmes and John Watson’s characters would come out and appear ‘human’ and ‘mortal’ and not have to remain just ‘best friends’ forever?

The (lack of) train references

One might argue, of course, that there are no specific train references in BBC Dracula, so how could we think it has anything to do with The Lost Special? Because, like The Lost Special, BBC Dracula is a Sherlock story in disguise! And because in the BBC Sherlock narrative itself there are already several episodes with train references; the most prominent of them is TEH and the last one - TFP. So there’s really no need for more references. But the train theme isn’t explained; it’s not ‘wrapped up’ at all, and neither is Sherlock’s story. I’ve tried to argue before that the detective is actually dying in S4, and so have others (X). And making him immortal will not save his credibility as a human.

I do hope he’ll wake up again, though - preferably with help of modern medicine rather than superstition - to a more credible and realistic story than both TFP and Dracula. ;) 

In TEH, apart from scenes with John Watson traveling alone through the Underground network of London, we have a derailed Underground train carriage near Sumatra road, where no-one would care to look. Like a Lost Special. It’s not carrying a bomb; the whole carriage is the bomb, which is threatening to overthrow the Parliament. Which very much makes me think that Mofftiss still have a metaphoric ‘bomb’ stored for us, a ‘rug-pull’ of sorts. But John and Sherlock (and the world) were not ready in TEH, so they switched it off. The ‘bomb’ never went off in S3 (2014). In TEH John was urging Sherlock to ”use your Mind Palace” to defuse the bomb, and I think he did - for the rest of the show up until TFP. Because in TEH, Instead of the big explosion, we got a truly weird, staged scene with Anderson (who didn’t quite believe Sherlock’s explanation anyway). 

And then the plot carried on in its heteronormative tracks with John’s wedding and Mary taking over the narrative. But in TST we learned that Sherlock, as a child, had re-written an old tale about someone encountering Death in ‘Samarra’ into a story where the hero ends up in Sumatra instead, and lives. In TFP the plot derailed completely into an absurd horror story, and we got Moriarty as train driver, going “Choo-choo!” like a train whistle: 

But the only 'explanation’ related to trains that we learn about Moriarty in TFP is rather lame: that Jim’s brother supposedly was a station master (not from canon, though). And then he goes “tick-tock, tick-tock” like a ticking bomb:

(Also similar to Mycroft’s ‘tick-tock’ countdown until he’ll die from obesity in TAB). But no bomb went off at that point in TFP either (I’m not counting the Patience Grenade here, because that happened before the ‘tick-tock’). So what was all that tick-tocking about? And how long will it keep ticking asdf?

The Sussex Vampire etc.

After reading some interesting metas from @yeah-oh-shit​ (X, X) and @ebaeschnbliah​ (X) I feel more and more convinced that legal issues with the ACD Estate might be very relevant for what Mofftiss are doing with BBC Sherlock and BBC Dracula. Three important ACD stories have now entered the public domain on January 1st this year: The Sussex Vampire (SUSS), The Illustrious Client (ILLU, where Holmes and Watson visit a turkish bath ;) ) and The Three Garridebs (3GAR; known for a scene where Holmes shows a glimpse of his true feelings for Watson). in SUSS there’s a quote about Sumatra which I find really interesting in the context described above:

“Matilda Briggs was not the name of a young woman, Watson,” said Holmes in a reminiscent voice. “It was a ship which is associated with the giant rat of Sumatra, a story for which the world is not yet prepared. 

As I said in this comment (X), there’s a lot of subtext to draw from this. And I do hope the world is prepared now. ;)

@raggedyblue​ @ebaeschnbliah​ @gosherlocked​

[b-listbadboy]

Castlevania Season 3 was disappointing

(Spoilers for Castlevania Season 3, if you haven’t seen it yet it’s out now on Netflix. I suggest watching that first before reading this review)

I won’t say it was an awful season by any stretch of the imagination but man was it a drag to get through.

Almost nothing of significance happens for the majority of the season and the things that did happen felt extremely off and weird. 10 episodes, 25 to 30 minutes each, and every single one except for the fucking TWO LAST EPISODES were spent dicking around with a mystery that had little to do with anything from season 2 beyond a really out there twist that I’m sort of iffy on. Top that off with a lackluster arguably stupid ending to leave us off on a needless cliffhanger, and that’s the magic remedy that will leave me feeling pretty damn frustrated.

The best parts, in my opinion, were with Isaac’s massive undead crusade he was waging throughout his journey for revenge, and Trevor and Syph’s interactions with each other as well as with the little villagers. Isaac’s arc going from a servant of Dracula to slowing evolving into the master of the damned felt genuine, intriguing, and badass! I really wish he was the next main villain instead as it makes sense thematically. He carries out Dracula’s nihilistic views of humanity in a similar but now more direct way and that can lead into something really intriguing. However, for some reason, this season left him and his whole journey on a back burner, and virtually everything else that is implemented into main villain role fell flat on its face execution wise.

For example; The new vampires of this season are Camilla’s three other empress sisters, and while they do have a plethora of personality at the very least, that kind of comes at a cost of the main threat being extremely diluted. We go from this hurting sympathetic undead overlord with the power of an anchent GOD, to a couple of wicked sassy sisters who just wanna eat people forever? It’s a bit lame of a progression from what we once had, we know Vampires like to eat people that’s nothing new or exciting. There’s no real twist to it besides it being “led by women in the dark ages” and granted that makes sense here since it IS the dark ages, but come on we literally just had arguably the BEST adaptation of friggin’ Dracula! This shouldn’t be all they got moving forward from that.

Now, I have ZERO issue with the main antagonists being female or even two of the four sisters (not by blood don’t worry) being a lesbian couple. I hate that I have to emphasize this, hell I often defend Cinder Fall in RWBY more than anyone in the fandom at all despite her issues as a complex and sometimes flat out badly written character. However, The four of them in this season have the most basic of plans that it seems arbitrary status quote fluff at best. It felt like just because it’s Castlevania, we HAVE to have the vampires as the villains. Even though in the games the Belmont’s were literally fighting werewolves, dragons, skeletons, and the GRIMM REAPER??

Therefore, the sense of urgency and tense calculating plans of ‘survival vs extinction’ is completely gone. And yknow in a way, I can kinda initially SEE that working in a sort of “Empire Strikes Back” esque plot. Yknow, with Alucard and the gang go around cleaning up Dracula’s leftover horde only for Isaac or even Camilla to have this huge vengeful comeback of dominance? But there’s no one exactly “striking back” or even taking any kind of immediate initiative after Dracula’s death. It’s been MONTHS after the whole event and no one seems like they really care about that world changing event from the last two season’s. Everything is fine and dandy, no one has a single worry in the world! How enthralling...I miss Godbrand 😑

Besides the plan the four empresses have as well as Issac’s revenge, which I hope will both be more explored in season 4, no one really has any goal to warrant THAT kind of length of a season. This is more of a Netflix problem that I have with most of their shows and it’s one of the reasons why I don’t like watching them. Almost every singe show Netflix produces now, feels the need to overstuff itself with needless filler that gets us really nowhere until the very end where it SUDDENLY all comes together. But because of the nature of binge watching and considering how Netflix wants to desperately keep their subscriptions in fear of intimidating competition, they make these shows 12 episodes long with HALF HOUR OR MORE amount of filler content that’s supposed to satisfy us cause it’s “cute”?! No, stop this shit! Granted, Castlevania wasn’t nearly AS bad as the live action shows, but honestly, what exactly was shown to us that couldn’t have been reduced to like 5 solidly paced episodes focused on one or two plot lines ONLY like before? It worked perfectly back then, why change what ain’t broke?

As much as I don’t like the immediate rush of Trevor and Syph’s out of nowhere sexual relationship, I didn’t overall mind it too much since they still somewhat felt consistent. Their characteristics play off very nicely with one another and it’s pretty easy to see the chemistry between the two....HOWEVER I’M STILL GONNA COMPLAIN ABOUT IT SO HERE WE GO!

I get that they were setting them up as an endgame ship of the series, there’s no denying that, but they start fucking for what feels like (to the audience) two days after and I think that’s a bit ridiculous! Even if Alucard states that it’s been at the very least a month worth of time since the events of Season 2, there’s no real physical signs showing that statement to be true. Hell, Trevor’s beard and hair remains the same despite a HUGE passage of time where it would naturally grow out to indicate said time passing by. But both him, Syph, Alucard, and damn near everyone else looks the exact same as last season. So for all I know it could have been like a week since Season 2 and that to me doesn’t feel exactly earned. The Season 2 finale didn’t explicitly leave off Trevor and Syph officially a couple, they felt more like partners in crime more than anything else. Not to say that there wasn’t any chemistry there to develope INTO a relationship GRADUALLY, but going from a little spark of interest to the immediate jump of them sleeping together naked all comfortably as if they’re a goddamn married couple is a STRETCH! Even Trevor himself thinks so too so don’t jump down my throat about not being immediately swooned by the shipping fanservice given to us. I don’t dislike them as a couple at all, in fact I think their dynamic is cute! However, I would have also liked to have this couple feel natural and earned. They most certainly do not feel earned this way, at least to me.

Oh god, then there’s this out of nowhere sexual tension between Alucard and his new two recruits from another region hinted at in the previous season? Mind you, Alucard was doing literally NOTHING throughout the entirety of Season 3. Yep, literally the ONE DUDE WHO BASICALLY KILLED DRACULA gets about fuck all story progression afterwards out of the three. But what they DO give him are these two new vampire hunting student’s who look identical to one another (no racial they just literally look like fraternal twins) so I assumed they were either siblings or a couple, which makes it REALLY WEIRD WHEN THEY BOTH FUCK ALUCARD OUT OF NOWHERE?! I’m NOT making this shit up I promise! What makes even less sense is that it was really just a ploy for them to steal the Belmont knowledge of killing vampires to show to their people who have been enslaved. Which of course ends with them being killed so it really makes this entire conflict in his character damn near pointless besides “sad vibes check”, but here’s the thing...why didn’t they just keep doing training with Alucard?? There were virtually no downsides to having him teach you how to kill Vampires to save your village from being enslaved, he was teaching you both very well and gave you like the eternal knowledge of how to kill literally EVERY MONSTER and even let you live in the castle FOR FREE, food and wine included! What was the turning point for them to want to kill him all of the sudden? Cause he’s a vampire?? THEY FUCKING KNEW THAT ALREADY!!! Why was is suddenly not a problem at first but then coincidentally a problem now? If they wanted to use this to somehow depict this notion of “Oh my dad/Dracula was right humans are the worst” mindset, trust me, it was better conveyed with Isaac. These twins side plot not only made no sense, but also felt unjustified for Alucard to be an emo boi. I get that it’s supposed to be symbolic of him going through the same issues that both of his parents went through, but none of that really showed how bad human’s are. Just that those two twins didn’t think things through apparently. So the point of Alucard having this odd character convenience shift feels by the numbers cliché, and most importantly CHEAP.

It really makes no sense to me why they’re adding so much of this filler for such a long time, especially with some of this filler being oddly sexual. I don’t mind honest depiction of sex between consenting adults of course, but it just felt so misplaced and awkward at parts where it showed itself. I felt like I was reading a mediocre fanfic of Castlevania instead of the actual show itself! Granted, Season 2 had somewhat of a similar dilemma but the lull in between was still showing the character specifically doing things to further the story along. Towards the end, it gave us a way more satisfactory closure of that saga with Dracula that felt natural and well earned. This season however, felt like they were scrambling with different ideas here and there and didn’t know which to go with. Alucard training new recruits in his castle, Trevor and Syph figuring out an estranged (and BORING/GENERIC) cult of Dracula’s plan, Camilla setting up an army with her fellow sisterhood of evil vampires to gain ultimate power, Hector surviving captivity by using his wit and charm, Isaac raising up the dead for revenge on his deceased master, a new character introducing an all new world to the lore of Castlevania as we know it, all of these interesting concepts and ideas that could easily make up for a good season alone! And instead of focusing on one or two ideas to develope into something natural, they ended up saying “FUCK IT! Fucking I dunno what to- WE’RE DOING ALL OF IT I DUNNO!” and mixed the whole thing in a blender of different flavors that don’t necessarily blend together well enough for a tasty satisfactory meal. It just ends up being a mesh of okay at best, and gross at worst.

IN CONCLUSION, Castlevania Season 3 had a rocky start, an okay middle, and a kind of cool end. There was definitely some cool and exciting ideas implemented in here, but not enough to warrant that lengthy amount of time that Netflix seems to love to give to most of their TV shows. Sometimes less is more, and all that shiny cool glitter isn’t necessarily going to turn out to be gold. I’ll give this season a 5/10. It’s not the worst I’ve ever seen but it certainly could’ve been a lot better.

P.S. “Who Do Ya Voodoo” from Dead Island is Isaac’s new theme song, you can’t convince me otherwise.

[motheatenscarf]

So, I recently recommended Castlevania to people based on the first 2 seasons, and having now seen the 3rd season I’m still keeping that recommendation but with some pretty strong warnings going in.

The TL;DR version is, I still recommend this series with the caveat that your mileage may vary depending on your tolerance for sexual themes and more specifically your sensitivity toward sexual assault. 

So uh, spoiler in the spoiler disclaimer, but content warning for discussion of the above themes. I apologize to mobile readers; this got long. I only feel the need to say all this because I have in the past recommended this show to people before these elements came into play in the first 2 seasons. So, I kind of owe it to those people who may have taken my recommendation to follow through now.

I’m sure it won’t come as a shock to anyone (or at least I hope it won’t) that Castlevania, the show which introduces its wandering drunk protagonist by having him overhear two inbred shit eating peasants in a bar talking about literal goat fucking, has a pretty cynical view on humanity and is a pretty hard R.

Most of that R rating and cynicism has been in regard to gore and Christianity and I’ve been extremely on board and pettily here for it. For all that it’s a gory mess with plenty of colorful language, however, it’s been extremely restrained when it comes to sexuality. 

For my ace ass, that was kind of an appeal. I’m not opposed to sexuality in my media, but people do tend to make it... egregious and often unbalanced. It often feels that any media that gets that R rating just goes “Fuck it, may as well!” regarding shoehorning its nudity and sexuality. And frankly, censorship laws in the United States are FUCKING ANTIQUATED AS ALL HELL, so a rape scene where the camera ogles the woman’s breasts as she’s assaulted? Yeah, sure, that’s an R. Consensual sex scene that shows no genitalia but the woman in clear arousal? That’s an NC-17 for you. And that’s just women; don’t get me started on queer censorship, we’d be here all day. So, given the country I live in, the fact that I like horror and fantasy, and the fact that I’m an asexual woman, you can maybe see where my stance on sexual themes in any adult oriented media is just, an exasperated sigh as I boredly sit through another rape scene.

So, our first scene in Castlevania S3 is of Alucard, having been alone for the last month now, slowly losing his mind to crippling loneliness and overwhelming guilt after having murdered his father where Trevor and Sypha took him at his word when he said he would be the lone guardian standing vigil over Dracula’s castle and the Belmont library. Turns out he was wrong about being fine, which we knew from last season as it ended with him alone in his room sobbing his heart out, but he’s already losing his grip here as he makes little puppets of Sypha and Trevor to carry conversation with. An eccentricity he fully acknowledges is insane.

Our next scene confirms through dialogue that Trevor and Sypha are now in a sexual relationship, even though they’re only ever shown cuddling up in bed talking about The Plot and various happenings a few episodes later. Nothing explicit is ever depicted between them.

Alucard, on the other hand, picks up a couple of strays who were the thralls of one of the vampires killed last season, specifically the evidently Japanese one named “Cho” and our two new characters............ I had to google their names, Sumi and Taka, are also Japanese. They ask him to train them to kill vampires to protect their clan. Alucard, clearly remembering what he said about “Think of all the things Dracula could have done if he’d put all this knowledge toward helping people instead of giving into his rage and destroying them,” decides to agree and help them. He is clearly trying to be the person his mother would have wanted. Aww. 

Except not aww, Taka and Sumi are two clearly traumatized and deeply flawed people from the masses which this series is, again, extremely cynical toward. They are unsubtley fixated on learning more and more powerful ways to kill vampires and Alucard is pretty chill about it because he can’t see through the 4th wall and hear the ominous music or the glances they exchange when he’s not looking. This is purely for the audience. They at one point have a discussion away from him where they try to psychoanalyze him and decide that his isolation is a self imposed punishment for killing Dracula and that this is as close as he can get to killing himself without actually doing it. THIS IS FOR THE AUDIENCE. Then they mentioned they should give him a reward for what he’s done for them.

What happens next is difficult to break down from their standpoint, as they’re not particularly well developed characters, not being Important Characters but just a duo from the masses which the show dismisses, but if you’ve caught a single frame of Alucard this season, is easy enough to explain from his perspective. They come to him at night when he can’t sleep, tell him he deserves a reward, and proceed to make sexual advances toward him, which he seems somewhat embarrassed and confused by at first before quickly becoming a participant in. Again, it is well established by this point that he desperately misses Trevor and Sypha, whom he was already jealous of the connection between last season, and is profoundly lonely. The sex, which he consents to, is clearly a proxy as it’s all he can get for now. The sex is also, unfortunately, initiated under false pretenses, and ends abruptly when the whole thing turns into a Christ allegory and they pin Alucard in the crucifix position after having betrayed him with a kiss (and then some) and demand he show them the secrets they’re certain he’s hiding from them. Alucard tries to reason with them, still insisting he knows they’re scared but that he’s been nothing but honest with them, but they’re too traumatized and broken to believe him, and so he kills them in self defense, all still right there on the bed where they were having sex. He then, reminiscent of Dracula from the series opening, stakes their bodies before the entrance to the castle as a warning to those who would come to harm him, telling the audience that he is Lisa’s son in many ways, but he is also Dracula’s, and is realizing with time and experience now that his father’s sentiment toward humanity may not have been so misplaced.

So you know. Lot to unpack there...

BUT THAT AIN’T IT, FOLKS!

There’s another, far less interesting (unbiased review here, folks) character named Hector. He’s a forgemaster which means he makes monsters which are loyal only to him. He’s no Isaac (whom I’d mentioned his backstory/characterization just kinda left a general bad taste in my mouth before but OH BABY, AM I CHANGING TUNE ON THAT ONE. Could write a whole review on Isaac but I’m gonna stay focused here) but he’s apparently here to stay, so fine. 

There was an evil femme fatale vampire last season who kinda bored me who tricked Hector into betraying Dracula and then took him captive when she got what she wanted out of him. She did not trick him with sex at least but was still “evil manipulative femme fatale” which... *yawn* In S3 she drags him back to her home country and then proceeds to talk to her own sort of war council on how to get him to make a monster army for them to use that won’t just kill them all.

The lesbian vampire war council are fuckin interesting and I love 2 of them. The other one is an actually evil seductress femme fatale who DOES manipulate him with sex. Yay. How original. Well at least there are finally enough interesting, compelling women in the story that this isn’t our token evil female vampire so it’s easy for me to shrug off and forgive. All you need to know about Hector is he played with dead animals as a kid, it freaked his parents out when he kept reviving dead things, he killed them, now he’s a dead critter loving sensitive weirdo who was willing to participate in a “humane cull” that would leave the human race in essentially livestock pens for vampires. 

So the entire time the red headed femme fatale is trying to get him to see that she’s not so bad, vampires can be civil, we don’t want what Dracula wanted, my sister didn’t trick you she appealed to your reason, blahblahblah, she’s calling him a “good boy” and leading him on, i fucking quote, “walkies” with a leash. There’s also a comment that she tended to an injured spider once. So,, y’know, she’s him, which means she’s best suited to manipulating him. And Hector even admits to being aware of what she’s doing and calls her out on it, but he’s trapped and doesn’t have much of a choice other than to go along with what she does and weirdly seems almost content at times. His weird naturalist... weirdness probably gives him some inferiority complex when it comes to vampires, I don’t know, his backstory and motive are not connected in the least and I’m frankly not interested enough in this character to give him much contemplation since it’s pretty clear there wasn’t much going into his creation. Anyway. Long story short, she eventually, with only technically lying to him about the purpose of a particular ring she wears, lures him into having sex with her and in the heat of passion has him swear loyalty to her before slipping a cursed ring on him which binds him exactly as he’d just sworn, essentially making him a slave. The sex, again, also stops here, but she makes some extremely unsettling comments later on about how he was surprisingly good at sex and she might “train him.” Which.... where to begin other than yikes, and why, and, where in the hell was a guy who played with dead animals supposed to learn to eat a bitch out like that anyway??

This is where we also, tying the themes together, learn that one of the allies Trevor and Sypha have been teaming up with was a child killer the whole time. They only learn this after he dies helping them fight the evil that had come to his town (and after the most iconic line of the season; “What the fuck is toilet paper?”) which they accomplish, but not before failing to save anyone in the village, which was consumed in an evil ritual. They’re alone again, with a distraught Sypha realizing what Trevor had tried to forget by getting caught up in her optimism, that, say it with me now;

So there is your mostly unbiased spoilery context for the scenes in question. You can make up your own mind from there if that’s something you can handle, I’m gonna go on to add a few of my own thoughts which do not represent how I believe anyone else should interpret the show, this is purely my own train of thought here.

Sex consented to under false pretenses is still rape. I don’t know that I would personally classify these as “rape scenes,” but that’s just me. The reaction of the characters afterward makes me think Hector’s comes closer than Alucard’s, but the fact that both have appropriate reactions to being sexually betrayed makes me think that’s mostly what people are talking about when they say either one was raped. Hector later falls to his knees in a panic and hopelessness as he realizes “You made me a slave, my life is over,” and Alucard just lays there on the floor where he murdered his father as he weeps silently in contemplation of his own despair. That’s... some heavy shit, and I can, again, easily see where someone with a history of abuse or assault can be completely traumatized all over again watching this. As for the leeriness/attempting to be titilating/making rape “sexy” that a lot of adult fantasy/horror does... eh? I’m asexual, none of it’s sexy to me, and I was paying attention to the visual and audio cues the entire time that were making the audience aware with their ominous music, flashing between sex and battles against evil, and watching the instigators (Taka and Sumi, and Lenore the femme fatale vampire) as the camera focused on their scheming faces. The camera in Alucard’s scene especially just seemed to want to show us how sad and lonely he is, but that was pretty well established by that point and I know a sex scene devolving into a murder scene is jarring for people.

The themes of the season were manipulation, trust, and betrayal. Hector’s story reaches a pivotal turning point the moment the ring is slipped on him. Could it have been implemented differently than through the femme fatale seduction route? Absolutely, the show hadn’t really adopted sexual themes until this season and probably could have done so without it. She’d already lied to Hector an said that the rings were symbols she and her sisters wore to unite them, she could have been lying and welcomed him to join them and gotten him to swear loyalty to them in a ceremony after spending more time getting him to trust her. It was dumb and unnecessary and probably added in there just so maybe Alucard wasn’t the sole bearer of such an experience, or maybe because they shifted his plotline to fit in with the established themes, or maybe they could only sneak a bisexual threesome past the censors if they threw in more straight sex. What can I say? The cynicism of this show is relatable.

Alucard’s was less “Yikes” for me because he was never in a position where he didn’t have emotional or physical power over Taka and Sumi, he was a mentor to them who made no sexual advances whatsoever and seemed to only want to participate in their advances because it temporarily made him feel loved and worthy only to have the rug pulled out from under him and remind him that much more painfully of how alone he is, and how right his father may have been, and how wrong he was for killing him. Could this have been done without a sex scene? Yep, it always can. I know what the writers were trying to convey and I personally don’t have an issue with it and see its effectiveness, but I fully acknowledge another hour of spitballing in the writer’s room would have avoided that. I don’t necessarily think it’s a good or bad thing that they included this, it just... is, for me. I personally think if they’re going to confirm the sexual relationship between Trevor and Sypha, though, and then show us that Alucard is clearly missing them, there’s kinda one natural conclusion to make on how Alucard’s relationship with these two was going to go. I actually think it should have been better established and more time should have been spent on his relationship with them and depicted it as romantic/sexual from an earlier stage rather than just seemingly coming out of nowhere to people who hadn’t realized, “Oh, they’re his proxies,” earlier. I personally found it more tragic than traumatizing, but I don’t have a history of sexual abuse, so that is my own biased interpretation. If someone has that experience, I would not blame them in the least for finding this unpalatable.

Other arguments I’ve seen are, why is the only bi character shown to go through this kind of trauma? I mean, Alucard is our only confirmed bi character left for now, but Isaac is heavily implied to be queer, and again. Cynical universe. And he isn’t the only character period to go through it. They’re not singling him out because he’s bi, he’s just going through a character arc and is bi. I acknowledge again it could have been handled better but I don’t necessarily think this is biphobia so much as it is... unfortunate tone deafness. Tokenism is the problem, not Alucard’s bisexuality, so here’s hoping that we get another bi or queer character soon because as of right now, it’s just rife with unfortunate implications. I had this exact issue with Isaac’s backstory/characterization last season as our lone man of color with a major role and they immediately fixed his arc this season along with introducing several new characters of color and it was honestly the highlight of the season, so... the writers have proven to me that they can learn from their mistakes and spin my suspicion into HYPE, so I’m willing to give them through season 4 to see what they do with it.

I have also seen the argument for, why are the only Japanese characters tricky and sexually manipulative? Well, because they’re human and the show is extremely cynical in its depiction of humanity, we’ve just mostly seen that with white Europeans so far. As I mentioned before, tokenism is the problem. Is it annoying to see a sexually manipulative femme fatale vampire? Yes. Can I live with it and shrug it off a helluva lot easier when we get butch warrior vampire and tactical genius vampire talking back and forth about how they plan to conquer and drink an entire nation while espousing their affection for one another? Also yes!  While we do finally get a lot more characters of color this season who are fleshed out and beautifully complex and sympathetic, I think Taka and Sumi could have been better explored, since their mistrust of Alucard makes sense but their decision to have sex with him in order to get his guard down is... really not apparent other than through speculation with 0 textual evidence to support it. I don’t think they’re sexually manipulative because they’re Japanese, I think they’re sexually manipulative because the plot calls for it and they happen to be the only Asian characters we have for now and the writers made another pretty tone deaf decision. Behind the scenes, I do wonder if they were chosen from specifically Cho’s court just so the animators had an excuse to draw her some more/get that Japanese audience invested. Orientalism is a helluva thing here in the west though, and the sexualization of east Asians is especially fucked up and I’m not gonna say this did not have catastrophically tone deaf implications. I hope we get more Asian characters with a nuanced depiction, and even though they are the only Asian characters, they are not the only sexual abusers and they are far from the only sympathetically broken but dangerous characters we see.  

This is also, I’m fairly certain, a dual-studio production, and I do know Castlevania is a Japanese video game series based on European vampire stories, and in the endless love letter between Japanese and American media, some things gets botched in the exchange. That doesn’t excuse it, and that doesn’t mean it isn’t harmful, but I also don’t think it means “Cancelvania.” But I’m Mexican-American, and Not Asian-American, or more specifically Japanese-American, so, this is purely my perspective. 

I won’t defend the choices, I certainly won’t argue with people who draw a line in the sand and say “This is unacceptable, I won’t watch this,” that’s a valid perspective to have. To me, the writers through Isaac have proven they know when and how to correct course when they need to, so I’m cautiously optimistic that this was all build up for a dynamite season 4 if/when we get it. The show is cynical, I’m cynical, but I can recognize careful writing when I see it, and to me the highlights of this unrepentantly stupid fucking show that I kinda love are gonna be worth sticking through the stuff that makes me wrinkle my nose with concern because I want to see where it goes. A time may come when that stops being the case, but for me it hasn’t reached that point yet. I completely understand if it has for anyone else though.

[mst3kproject]

The Mask of Satan

Like a number of MST3K films, The Mask of Satan has multiple titles – it also goes by Black Sunday and Revenge of the Vampire.  The cast includes Ivo Garrani and Arturo Dominici, both of whom were in Hercules, and it was directed by Mario Bava, who worked on Hercules, Hercules Unchained, and Danger: Diabolik.  It’s an overwrought and highly riffable film – even the opening credits invite you to make fun, what with their announcement that this is ‘A Galatea Jolly Picture’ and the mention of a company called ‘Titanus’.  I can only imagine the reaction of the bots.

Three hundred years ago a vampire, or maybe a witch, named Asa was burned at the stake along with her boyfriend Igor.  As she dies, Asa cursed the head inquisitor, who happened to be her brother, and told him she would have her revenge.  Fast forward to the nineteenth century.  A couple of doctors are on their way to a medical conference in Moscow when they happen across Asa’s tomb, and one of them accidentally allows some blood to fall on her, which brings her back to life. As foretold in her own curse, she sets out to destroy her brother’s descendants, which of course include Katya, a young woman played by the same actress as Asa.  That’s just how movies work.

While many movies that were on MST3K were bottomlessly cheap, The Mask of Satan was clearly fairly expensive: there are large, elaborate sets and detailed costumes, all too obviously artificial to really be convincing but impressive nevertheless. A few of the effects, like Asa’s eyes growing back in her skull or the ground buckling as Igor rises from the grave, are really cool.  Even the mediocre ones do their job, and the only real effects failure is the fakest rubber bat this side of Samson vs the Vampire Women.  This is obviously where most of the budget was spent, and they got what they paid for.

There’s also one really well-handled story element, which is when Asa makes one of the doctors, Kruvajan, into her undead slave. His inability to resist her makes us earnestly worried for his younger colleague Andre later in the film, and actor Andrea Checchi is really creepy, clearly distinct from the living version of Kruvajan, and yet still makes us believe that the other characters don’t find his behaviour suspicious.  Without any hesitation, this is the best performance, live or dubbed, in the movie.

Other aspects of The Mask of Satan are not nearly so well-done.  The sound, for example, is very odd.  More than once we hear wailing wind in shots without a single leaf stirring in their ‘creepy woods’ stock footage.  In other places where ambient sound might heighten the atmosphere, such as the first few moments of the terrified milkmaid on her way to the barn, the film is eerily silent.  Katya’s appearance is always accompanied by sweeping romantic music, even in the first scene where she’s supposed to be threatening – in one spot, she actually plays her own love theme on the piano.  There’s a bit where Asa clearly calls out Igor’s name, but the dub people didn’t bother adding it.

Also weird is that nobody in this movie, or at least nobody responsible for the dubbing, knows the difference between a dragon and a griffin, let alone a vampire and a witch.

The actual plot, as you may have noticed, is a list of tropes: identical descendants, history destined to repeat itself, love at first sight, and so forth, very little of it really justified in the story beyond assuming that everybody knows how these things work.  Old classics like the trapdoor spike pit and the pitchfork-wielding mob make completely straight-faced appearances. Characters speak lines and lines of exposition that doesn’t even try to sound like natural conversation.  In particular, Katya’s father spends most of his time on screen telling other people things they must already know.  Andre falls in love with Katya the moment he sees her, because the writers are too lazy to build up an actual emotional bond between them.  And surely it’s just a coincidence that casting the same actress as both Asa and Katya also saved money for the film-makers!

The writing is incredibly contrived.  Asa’s awakening, for example: having happened across the cemetery, one of the doctors explains to the other that the soul of a witch is kept down by a stone cross above her coffin.  Moments later, he is attacked by a bat out of nowhere (no explanation for this is ever given, although the movie acknowledges that it’s mysterious) and smashes both the cross and some glass in trying to scare it off, thus allowing his blood to drip onto the corpse.  This sounds kind of forced when I write it out, and believe me, it’s even more so in the movie.

Not so bad but still pretty awkward is the discovery of the secret passage behind the fireplace.  This feels like it really ought to be the result of careful searching but instead it’s a complete accident when a curtain catches on fire. There isn’t even any hint of a supernatural explanation for this as there was for the bat.  It just happens, and by very good luck it is exactly what the characters need!  The movie also leaves open the question of how anybody used the secret passage without wrecking the painting that covers the lever.  Again, no explanation is ever offered.

Like Samson vs the Vampire Women, The Mask of Satan tells us that we are looking at events of the past that are destined to be repeated.  Asa even says as much to Katya – this young woman was born to aid Asa’s resurrection, and she has no purpose in the world outside of that.  This leads to the most annoying thing in the movie: Katya is a complete cipher.  Like Helen in Revenge of the Creature, you could replace her with an object and the story wouldn’t change.  She could be a mystical book or magic amulet, anything the villains want to get and the heroes therefore need to keep.

Only once is the possibility raised of Katya having a life outside the movie: when Asa taunts her by telling her that Andre’s love for her could have saved her.  Even as a hypothetical free woman, Katya is still a possession, a thing – she can belong to Asa, or to Andre.  She cannot save herself because she has no will of her own.

In spite of this statement, Andre isn’t even the one who saves Katya!  He manages to break Asa’s hypnotic hold on him when he realizes Katya is wearing a cross, which Asa would be unable to do, but then he just sits around weeping and being comforted by a priest while the torch-wielding villagers run in to seize Asa and burn her at the stake.  It is only with Asa’s death that Katya is truly ‘saved’.  Andre didn’t defeat the undead Kruvajan – the priest did that. He didn’t kill Igor – Katya’s brother Konstantin did that, before dying, himself.  We’re supposed to believe Andre is the hero of this movie when he did basically nothing for the entire running time!

So the protagonists of this movie are completely useless, and don’t even have any romantic chemistry – hence the ridiculous music that always accompanies Katya, trying to make up the lack.  That doesn’t have to kill a movie.  One of my favourite old horror movies, Countess Dracula, has useless heroes, and I still enjoy it very much because the villains of that story are very compelling.  Likewise with most of Hammer’s Frankenstein movies, dominated by Peter Cushing’s doctor while the so-called ‘heroes’ merely revolve around him.  But the villains of The Mask of Satan aren’t particularly interesting, either.  Igor has nothing to him.  He wanders around looking like Vlad the Impaler and doing Asa’s bidding, but he has no personality.  Maybe this is intentional because he’s her zombie slave.  Asa herself does some monologuing, but is never particularly intimidating, possibly because she spends most of the movie lying flat on her back in a crypt while other people do her bidding.

The Mask of Satan presents women in general as very passive creatures.  Katya is a helpless victim, and even Asa, who ought to be the driving force of evil, sits around and lets others do her work. While Katya obeys orders, Asa gives them, which is supposed to establish her as evil by reminding us that women aren’t supposed to be in charge of anything.  The only other female characters with speaking roles are the milkmaid, who exists to passively watch some evil goings-on and then report them to the male characters, and her mother, a servant.  It is abundantly clear that the writers expect women to help the men and do as they’re told.

This is a pretty dull movie, all things considered. It launched the careers of both director Mario Bava and star Barbara Steele, but since he spent the rest of his career making Hercules movies and she went on to be in things like Nightmare Castle and The She-Beast (as distinct from the She-Creature), neither exactly became a name you’ll hear mentioned at the dinner table.  Despite some nice effects and effectively creepy moments, The Mask of Satan is not very engaging, egregiously sexist, and overall blandly forgettable.

[sublimegentlemanalpaca]

consider: vampires in cotig, and/or beam stoker in cotig????????????

Hm...that is something to consider Anon. Certainly something to consider. Something to which deserves due consideration that I’ll likely give overdue consideration being me and what not. So, what to consider first?

I suppose the first thing to consider is which Caretakers are likely to have dealt with Vampires in some way. Now, you might be thinking ‘Al shouldn’t the first thing to be considered be what sort of Vampires there are’? And perhaps you’d be right to think that. However when thinking this over that wasn’t the first thing I considered and I fact I didn’t really give it much consideration. The most I gave was going in assuming that most save maybe a handful of Vampire beliefs, superstitions, whatever they’re called, are true for the most part. Back on topic. 

 Now. The question of which Caretakers have dealt with Vampires should probably be followed by some sort of almost Disclaimatory ‘if any’, but I’m fairly certain we have our own thoughts of those who have certainly had such dealings.

Their first Caretakers that come to mind (or rather came to mind as I was thinking this all through) was the Romantics/ Hearts on Fire (names by Frosttrix). That being Mary Shelley, Percey Shelley, and George Gordon/ Lord Byron. Now before doing a bit of research (Meaning going through Wikipedia) I had originally thought Byron wrote some really important bit of Vampire Literature. Turns out I was wrong, while he did at one point write an unfinished story which had Vampires and stuff, the one who did write an important example of Vampire Literature was John Polidori. The Hugo Dyson to the Romantics Prophetic Trio? To be honest I’m surprised he wasn’t a Caretaker or at least an Ally like Wilde. Maybe he’s a Fiction? Anyway The Vampire of Polidori’s Vampyre was apparently based on/ influenced by Lord Byron. This leads to the hilarious idea of some Vampire just up and kidnaping/impersonating Byron and Percey having no idea that such a switcheroo happened. Only for Mary Wallstonecraft Godwin, and John Polidori to point out how damn obvious it is to Shelley that this guy isn’t Byron. No matter how pretentious and over dramatic he acts.. And then they go and save Byron. I imagine this happens when Percy and George are starting out but before Mary becomes a Caretaker (since I’m pretty sure she’d be a Caretaker after Percey and George, but out tank them soon enough and become Caveo Principia).

The next obvious Caretaker to have had dealings with Vampires is of course my favorite of the Caretakers Emeritus (or at least on equal ground with Shakespeare), Edgar Allan Poe. Being the most Supernaturally knowledgeable and practiced of course he’s dealt with Vampires of some sort or form. No doubt he’s known a few before they were Vampires. Leaving those who recognize him centuries later very confused. He’s probably also learned a great deal about them through his Necromantic Studies as Prospero. Probably had a Romantic Tryst or two with some Vampire nobility or something. Maybe? I’m guessing. Interestingly, with most Vampires being adverse to Silver, Poe might be pretty safe with his Binding Ring. And I bet you he insisted the Watches be made out of Silver to help keep away Vampires. I’m also sure Poe (going off of works like the Case of M. Valdemare) took a great interest in Vampiric Mesmerism. In particular discovering that it’s like a weak and somewhat temporary form of Binding. Meaning he’s safe from it, being already bound. And the best way to keep someone safe from Vampiric Hypnosis is to partially hypnotize them before hand. Just in case. Back to the Silver Ring thing, I must say that the idea of Poe Punching out Vampires is pretty hilarious. If out of character to some extent? 

I’m also sure Poe has been mistaken for a Vampire at several points in his life. Usually followed by tedious episodes of proving in every way possible that is not a Vampire. Very annoying. Although him being able to pass for a Vampire has probably helped on more than one occasion. Though I’m not sure what those occasions might be. Really I’d imagine Poe has all the knowledge and know how necessary to be a badass Vampire Hunter if he so chose.

  While Poe might not be up to Punching our Vampires..his Apprentice Nathaniel Hawthorne certainly is. Punching, kicking, you Name it. If Poe dealt with Vampires as Poe Hawthorne must have been along for the ride at some point. One thing of interest I came across was that apparently Hawthorne Wood is one of the preferred Woods for Stakes. Now, I’m not saying Hawthorne being Hawthorne could take his name and have it so his punches and kicks were his ‘stakes’ meaning he could take out Vampires with a well placed kick to the chest....but....if any Caretaker could do that, it’d probably be Nathaniel Hawthorne. And if that doesn’t work, well we know he knows how to use Hammers and a Katana. So...yeah. 

Admittedly there are probably Vampires that aren’t violent, antagonistic, and might be quite friendly if not helpful. Nothing comes to mind, but I’m sure they’re there? I’m reading this book right now with notable Vampires like Lord Ruthven and Francis Varney are not Evil at all. But I digress.

Other Caretakers who’ve encountered Vampires: Jacob Grimm, Goethe, Coleridge (before defecting to the ICS). And maybe Chaucer or Geoffrey of Monmouth. Because.

I’m guessing most a Vampires tend to be Antagonistic, Witch some just being people wanting to be left alone who don’t go around killing and what not. I think?

Now then. Time to Consider Stoker. Now in considering Stoker I suppose I must also consider Van Helsing. With the main question being if Van Helsing is a separate person from Stoker, or if the two are really one in the same? Apparently Bram is short for Abraham...so...I’m sorta leaning toward the two being the same guy? Stoker just making Van Helsing Dutch so as to not make him an obvious self insert? I’m not sure. It might make more sense if they’re different. I remember hearing how Van Helsing was apparently one to act weird and foreign’ but went into serious mode when Vampire symptoms were brought up. Hm...I wonder if Van Helsing could be a Poesibility...hm. Admittedly I originally thought Stoker would be the one Mistake Poe for a Vampire. But by the time Poe ‘died’ Stoker was only like two or something. Anyway, I must admit I’m not too familiar with Stoker (and I cannot recall if I actually have read Dracula or not. I should do that at some point). But I’m guessing Stoker hunted Vampires, and probably wasn’t offered any Archipelago related stuff because he was too focused on Vampire Hunting. That and any time Wilde would try and bring it up Stoker wouldn’t listen. Again, I really don’t know much about Stoker. Though I could see him in a Splinter Group I though up called the Eldrichtticians. He might also have been a Fiction ? Or the Caretakers at the time just didn’t see him working well as a Caretaker? I don’t really know. Sorry.But I digress.

There are my considerations on Vampires in CotIG and Bram Stoker in CotIG. I hope they were sufficient good Anon.

If you have anything you’d think I should consider do tell. This considering exercise has been quite fun and kept the mind away from tedious boredom. Thank you.Make of this what you will.

Al, the Chronographing Cottager and Prince of Naming.

[pellicano-sanguino]

Random thoughts while watching...  OSK Revue?

I finally saw my first OSK Revue show (Dracula, 2017), so thought I'd write about it. This is not a proper review, just a bunch of random thoughts. I will be making a lot of comparisons to Takarazuka in this, and please understand that I do not mean to imply that OSK is just a zuka copycat, I simply wanted to compare the two and see what they have in common and what not (also, all opinions are about this production and these actresses only, I'd need to see more shows to form a proper, better educated opinion on OSK's style as a whole.).

First impression was a surprise at how small the production is. I knew OSK isn't as big as zuka, but still, the theater's stage was very small and there were only about ten actresses, many of them pulling several roles, I think. I felt like I was watching a Bow Hall show cut in half both by stage length and actress numbers. Having a small number of actresses causes there to be some slower, quieter scenes, where a character monologues for a while so that everyone else has time to do the costume change.

Even so, it still felt very similar to zuka. Despite the small stage, they do dance, including a post-show minirevue that includes the main otokoyakus dancing in pretty, sparkly tailcoats and a duet dance with the main leads. The makeup is similar but there's some small differences that I'm not expert enough to point out (don't know anything about makeup). There are some stylistic differences in zuka makeup too, so it felt like I was watching a sixth zuka troupe and this was their troupe's personal style.

Minirevue dancing (and look, some parade feathers. Small feathers but feathers none the less.)

Otokoyaku still sing like otokoyaku and musumeyakus sound just like zuka musumes. I liked the leading otokoyaku's voice, it was pleasant to listen. Though she has to do a lot of angry angsting throughtout the musical, which is occasionally bad for her voice, making it sound like she has a bit of a sore throat. The songs were ok, nothing particularly memorable or catchy. A lot of the music is rather simple, like piano music and such.

I admit, when I was putting the disk in the DVD player, I was chanting in my head ”Please follow the book at least barely, please don't be weird and rewrite the story wildly.” Well, no such luck, this isn't a book faithful adaptation. Which unfortunately leads to me not having a clue what the hell is going on most of Act 1. But I am happy that it's not a comedy or a super weird adaptation.

I have to say that seeing a completely serious take on a vampire musical is a breath of fresh air and something I wish zuka could do. Don't get me wrong, I love the lighthearted vampire shows like Seal of Roses (which maybe didn't aim for lighthearted but kinda accidentally became one). Zuka always makes the vampire stories, well...  kinda weird (I've already ranted about the randomness, plot holes and inconsistent vampire lore in my Random Thoughts While Watching Zuka #4). I appreciate them thinking outside the box and surprising me instead of recycling the most generic vampire story plots and tropes, but as a vampire lover I would die for vampire show that actually takes itself seriously. I suppose the Poe Family show is a serious take on the subject (no comedic parts or weird story elements), but that is probably thanks to the source material. Zuka can do cool&dark, they've done Elisabeth, so if they wanted they could make truly awesome vampire shows.

While I said that this is a serious take on a vampire story, there's still a short comedic song number in the beginning of Act 1, where a bunch of reporters try to interview Dracula after his arrival at London, only to have him scream NO COMMENTS at them.

This show uses sound and screen effects a lot. Most of the time they make sense (like hearing the sound of a train in the station) but there are moments where I hear a random noise or see strange images projected on the screens and go ”What the hell was that?”

There are only three big roles in this show: Dracula, Mina and Jonathan Harker. There's also this one lady in black who I suspect to be the spirit of Dracula's dead wife, who he grieves and longs for all the time. So yeah, the beginning of Act 2 reveals to us that this show has taken inspiration from Coppola's Dracula and lifts the vampire's origin from the movie. He was a warlord in medieval times (which means he's dressed in armor and has a sword YES me likey) and somehow a false letter was brought to his wife claiming that he had fallen in battle, which led to her committing suicide. When human Drac got home to discover his wife dead, he was devastated and broken, that is, until he hears that the church refuses to bury his wife because suiciders are sinners who go to hell. There's a literal DUN DUN DUUUUN sound effect as the count builds up rage, then curses God and allows the forces of evil to corrupt his body in order to revenge. He then proceeds to kill all of the priests/monks/whatever the church folks were supposed to be.

This slaughter of innocent unarmed humans would be brutal and super dramatic, but the fight choreography leaves...  much to improve. Yeah, zuka battle choreos can look like they're from the 60's Batman too, with punches that miss by a mile, but here...  the stabs are so lazy it looks like the poor victims are literally walking into his sword.

If Heaven won't accept

my suicided wife

I'll follow her to Hell!

(...and lick her knife.)

Not gonna lie, this is something I haven't seen zuka do. Sure, they've implied licking things, but it's always done quite swiftly and * elegantly * and not, well, like this. Tongue out and all, literally licking the knife prop.

I was curious to see if the kisses are still fake or not, since OSK is free to have their own traditions and don't have to follow rules set by Hankyu. Also, I keep hearing rumors that OSK is supposedly more daring than zuka when it comes to love scenes. Not in this show, at least. The romantic scenes are very chaste and more cute than sexy (also, the blood drinking scene, while definitely romanticized and very nice&dramatic, not any hotter than the blood drinking scenes in zuka). And the kisses are very much fake. Oh well, the actresses are spared of messing up their lipstick.

Speaking of messing up lipstick, I know that stain is supposed to be blood but it looks like a group of amorous ladies gave the count several sloppy kisses.

So, my guess for the plot is that Dracula comes to London in search for the woman who is the reincarnation of his wife. To lure women for him to see, he puts up...   a fashion show or something? Dresses are on display, including dead wife's wedding dress. Which Mina gets to wear, and Dracula is immediately convinced she's the incarnation and for the rest of the musical never calls Mina by her real name, just by the wife's name. Which is...  Elisabeth. I don't remember what the wife's name was in Coppola's movie, but still, the dramatic way Dracula pronounces this name does make it sound like it was lifted from another musical.

In Act 2 Jonathan, on his way to rescue his girlfriend from the vampire's castle, meets an annoying little kid. And yeah, just like in zuka, there are no child actors in OSK, children are played by adult women using cutesy kiddie voice and being super genki. But then the kid finds the knife that Elisabeth used to suicide herself and turns to face the audience while holding it, and I was like ”Great. The annoying kid has turned into a creepy kid.” If the child had turned out to be a vampire and in team Drac all along, that would have been an awesome plot twist. But instead he's actually an angel or something like that, providing Jonathan with the weapon that can kill the vampire.

Dracula has a bunch of vampiric minions at his castle, not just the three brides. I have to ask, what is it with vampire shows having one main vampire who behaves normally and then having a bunch of background vampires/minions who speak/sing like they're high as a kite and lumber around dancing artsy inteeeerpretive dances? It's...   weird. Why are some vampires normal and some complete fruitbats?

This Dracula must be the angstiest version of the character I've ever seen. There's occasionally great moments where he's charismatic, seductive or in rage mode, but the majority of time he is either silently depressed or actively whining (even many of his angry scenes come out as more whiny than aggressive). It's a very dialogue heavy show and because of the language barrier and free adapting of the story, I have no idea what his angsty dialogues are about. But whatever he says, he actually manages to win Mina's sympathy and they dance together. Even if they kiss, I still think Mina's feelings are more pity and less sincere romantic interest. Also, I should point out that I have nothing against depressed, angsty, reluctant vampires in general, it's just that I don't usually associate that kind of behavior with Dracula (depression and angst is more sir Francis Varney's thing.). Dracula is cold, ruthless, cunning and irredeemably evil, not some emotional lovelorn wreck.

I have said this before and will say again: Dracula does not aishiteiru.

Jonathan makes an attempt to save Mina but doesn't get to kill the count. Which is good because while the Jonathan of the book would definitely want and be able to fight the count, this musical portrayed the character as a cute and awkward softie nerd (I approve, not all male heroes need to be tough guys) and avoiding getting his hands wet with blood was a good move. Poor guy would be traumatized for life, even if it would be to save his girlfriend, he's just not a killer. Instead, Dracula decides to let the lovers go free and suicides himself, like he usually does in adaptations where they make him have a romance with Mina.

You know how in zuka there's the tradition that in the end the dead characters make an appearance dressed in white, to sing and prance around in an afterlife epilogue. Well, not in this show, but there is something kinda similar. In the ending scene the spirit of Elisabeth appears behind the dying count and poses dramatically with him, spreading her cape like white bat wings, taking him with her to afterlife. I think it looks cool.

To end this, let's talk about the blood drinking scene. In all vampire stories, these are the most important scenes, in my opinion. Blood drinking is what vampires do, it's their trademark thing, and if you chicken out of showing it or handle it lazily, then why the hell are you making a vampire story in the first place. You don't make Phantom of the Opera adaptation and fail to have the unmasking scene be the most dramatic and memorable scene, and similarly, you don't make a vampire story and fail to deliver the blood drinking scenes properly. Yes, I have weirdly strong opinions about this, deal with it.

Very early in Act 1 we see Dracula suffer from malnutrition, his hair turning gray and his knees failing, making him slump to the ground, very visibly suffering. For emergency he empties a small vial of blood that doesn't seem to make him get any better. And it is this moment when Jonathan decides to visit him for the first time for work-related reasons (no idea what his profession is in this story. In the fashion industry?). So, we have a thirsty vampire and a nice, cute bloodbag in the same room all alone.

Me: Drink him!

Dracula: Nope. I'd rather suffer. :)

What the hell? In the book he totally noms Jonathan. Is this because he's a male? This Dracula afraid to drink from someone who has icky boy blood? Oh well, he gets better later anyway, so I assume he gets some blood off-stage. But still, it was very confusing to see a starving vampire not take advantage of an opportunity of some easy blood.

Well, later Dracula is introduced to Mina and immediately decides ”This is the One.” And I cheer him on.

Me: Drink her!

Dracula: No. Now is not a good time. :)

Me: Damnit! DRINK SOMEBODY!!!

We have to wait all the way to the end of Act 1, but finally, we get a genuine on-screen blood drinking scene. Just as important as the moment of blood drinking itself is what leads up to it. In this musical it's Jonathan piecing together all the clues and finally getting Dracula's real identity (in a rather nerdy monologue of stuff like ”...Dracul means Dragon, and the A at the end makes it Son of the Dragon...   wasn't there a warlord named like that in Romania hundreds of years ago...”).

Nerdsplaining time!

Terrified with his discovery he tries to save Mina, who Dracula has just kidnapped, spilling the beans for her as well. The revelation of Dracula's vampiric nature scares the two humans and there's plenty of dialogue that goes over my horizon, but I do get that the thing that makes Dracula snap is when Mina confesses to loving Jonathan.

The jealous vampire then starts to torture Jonathan by...   some kind of Darth Vader mind-choking magic. Well, I suppose it's choking, because Jonathan holds his hands around his throat as if struggling against invisible fingers, but the sound effect doesn't suggest choking at all. It actually sounds much more gruesome and painful, a nasty ripping sound, as if the count is telekineticly tearing the poor man limb from limb and simultaneously flaying him alive. Eww, it's a gross sound effect.

Mina obviously can't idly just watch as her boyfriend is painfully tortured to death while she has the power to put an end to it. To save Jonathan, she loudly exclaims that she doesn't love him. And the count, being a little bit of an idiot here, buys it. Strangely, Jonathan seems to buy it too, crying Mina's name in disbelief. The torture ends (thank goodness), and to make sure no harm comes to Jonathan, Mina tells Dracula that if you're really a vampire and if it's blood you want, you can have mine!

Just let me gather this bothersome veil...

...and Behold! Vampire bait.

She dramaticly pulls the veil of the wedding dress on one shoulder and reveals her neck. I love this. And so does Dracula. This is the one moment where his eyes actually light up with passion and while he attempts to stay cool, you can see his chest rise as his breathing gets faster with excitement. Darn right, count. Blood offered by free will is the best stuff there is. And it was about time you finally drank someone.

It's always interesting when humans offer their blood to the vampire out of free will, because there's usually good and complex reasons behind it, and this is no exception. Mina doesn't offer her blood out of sympathy or under the influence of vampiric hypnosis or even being seduced by the pretty blood drinker. It's offered by free will but it's very much not concensual. The offer of blood is the only way she can distract the vampire long enough to let Jonathan escape and get help. By playing along with the count's delusions about Mina being the reincarnation of his wife, she is cleverly buying time, manipulating him. Only, unfortunate for these two, there is no van Helsing or any other member of the book's league of merry vampirehunting men in this show for Jonathan to run to, so all he can do is to follow them to the castle and attempt a lone rescue mission (which fails).

Frankly, the one who eventually defeats Dracula (kinda) is Mina, who manages to win the count's sympathy (making him learn the good old ”if you really love someone, you'll want what's best for them and let them go instead of selfishly trying to force them to stay with you”). And this blood drinking scene is the first time we see that she is aware of the power she has over the vampire. Maybe in the end she didn't exactly intend to make him commit suicide, just trying to make him let them go, but old Drac was living a horribly depressed and angsty unlife anyway, so it doesn't surprise me that he decided to end it. That's why the (kinda). Mina has great influence over Dracula but I do think his decision to die a final death seems to be not a result of manipulation but a genuine decision. Though he still technically makes her do it, by forcibly placing the knife in her hands and then grabbing her wrists, stabbing himself, making her involuntarily deal the killing blow. Kinda dick move (Mina is quite horrified of this, understandably), but at least I'm happy Mina doesn't kill herself too in this one (yes, I'm still angry at that ending in 2011 Wao Youka's Dracula. The count kills himself so Mina can go back to being human and back to Jonathan. And then the dumb woman makes the count's sacrifice completely pointless by throwing away the life he attempted to save.) Dracula ends his unlife but Mina and Jonathan return to the world of the living, where they belong.

Final random thought: Knightly warlord Dracula looks a bit like Lancelot’s long lost, dangerously unhinged brother. (it’s the wig and the silver armor with blue details. The actresses are very different.)

[weekendwarriorblog]

The Weekend Warrior 4/16/21: IN THE EARTH, JAKOB’S WIFE, GUNDA and LINCOLN CENTER REOPENS

This is hopefully gonna be a relatively lighter and more streamlined column, because I have so much going on over at Below the Line, including a full weekend of awards this weekend past and another even busier one coming up. Because of this, I wasn’t really able to watch nearly as much stuff as I would have liked and have written fewer than normal reviews. (I know you’ve heard this tune before, but unfortunately, this state will continue for at least the next week, but once Oscars are done and past, I can get back to this column.

The big news this week is that New York’s Film at Lincoln Center has reopened with a retrospective celebrating the 50th Anniversary of FilmLinc’s long-running collaboration with the Museum of Modern Art, New Directors/New Films, which will begin on April 28. You can see the full line-up of the 2021 New Directors/New Films here, though I’m not sure how much I’ll be covering this year. (see above) It will take place in the virtual cinemas of FilmLinc and MOMA for people across the country and for those in New York City at the reopened FilmLinc theaters.

Leading up to that date, there will be a two-week retrospective called New Directors/New Films at 50, which will screen at the FilmLinc theaters as well as on Virtual Cinema, and that line up is:

Duvidha dir. Mani Kaul

Following dir. Christopher Nolan

The Goalie’s Anxiety at the Penalty Kick dir. Wim Wenders

The Living End dir. Gregg Araki

Lucía dir. Humberto Solás

My Brother’s Wedding dir. Charles Burnett

Peppermint Candy dir. Lee Chang-dong

Playing Away dir. Horace Ové

Les Rendez-vous d’Anna dir. Chantal Akerman

Sleepwalk dir. Sara Driver

Twenty Years Later dir. Eduardo Coutinho

Speaking of festivals, apparently there is a Brazilian genre fest going on right now called Fantaspoa 2021 that takes place on the Brazilian streaming horror service Dark Flix.

I have family in Brazil including a filmmaking cousin so I wonder if they know about this, but they seem to have a lot of cool and interesting films to share… and someday I hope to watch some of them. :)

Let’s get into some of the theatrical releases, shouldn’t we?

Filmmaker Ben Wheatley (High-Rise, Free Fire) is back with his eco-thriller IN THE EARTH (Neon), which premiered at the Sundance Film Festival earlier this year. It stars Joel Fry and Ellora Torchia as Dr. Martin Lowery and Alma, two park rangers sent into the woods in search of missing researchers only to encounter an odd and eccentric hermit woodsman named Zach (Reece Shearsmith), who has lots of crazy ideas about nature and its effects on humans, so he proceeds to capture and torture the two rangers.

This is another one of Wheatley’s stranger films, one that he completely filmed and completed during the pandemic, and I’m not even sure what I can completely explain in the second half of the movie, not just due to spoilers but also because it just goes into some fairly out there places. But no mistake that this is true horror, especially when you see how the two main characters have to deal with the situation they found themselves in.

What’s interesting is that the story takes place during a pandemic but not necessarily the one we’re currently in, but as Martin and Alma get deeper into the woods, horrible things start happening. They’re attacked in their tents while sleeping and their shoes are stolen and then Martin gets a nasty cut on his foot that gets infected with something almost plant-like, which leads to a fairly tense and horrifying scene later on.

The movie shifts pretty drastically in the second half as the duo encounter another researcher named Olivia (Hayley Squires), who happens to be Zach’s wife AND Martin’s ex-girlfriend. Yeah, it’s that kind of movie, but it’s also one where it’s never really more than the two or three characters at a time. The movie can be slow at times but it always maintains the viewer’s interest in what is happening and what might happen next. And then it just gets so strange in that last act, really trippy and surreal and crazy with lots of fast-cut images and loud noises that really puts the viewer even further on edge. OH, and as you can see from the picture, Zach has an axe, which takes the film into places more akin to The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and away from the more cerebral stuff.

Where In the Earth really transcends is that it’s just such a great looking movie, and when you have a composer like Clint Mansell providing the score, as he did with Wheatley’s High-Rise, then you end up with a movie that works quite well for what it’s trying to do, which is to astound, disorient and puzzle the viewer but in a way that makes them want to watch it again and try to figure out more with each viewing.

As weird as the movie is, I could see there being an audience for the movie, particularly when you consider how movies like The Witch and Hereditary and Midsommar and The Lighthouse have found a niche audience or auteur lovers. Oddly, all four of those movies were released by A24, offering further proof that NEON is trying to get in on their turn.

I’m not quite sure how many theaters NEON is putting In the Earth into, but Wheatley’s latest eco-thriller maybe a harder sell with no known stars, and it’s definitely gonna be looking to bring in cinephile and auteur-huggers more than the normal Joe or Jill off the street. I expect NEON will try to get the movie into at least 1,000 theaters with many screens and reopened movie houses looking for content, but I’m not sure I’d expect this to do that much better than last week’s Voyagers, but maybe $3 million or so. It just doesn’t have much chance against a mainstream movie like Godzilla vs. Kong.

Anyway, check it out. I’ll have an interview with Ben Wheatley over at Below the Line probably early next week.

Another movie I highly recommend for horror fans is Travis Stevens’ JAKOB’S WIFE (RLJEfilms/Shudder), which stars the terrific Barbara Crampton and equally great Larry Fessenden as Ann Fedder, a woman married to the local small town pastor (aka Jakob), who feels that she hasn’t been able to live her full life while married to him for 30 years. When she has an encounter with a mysterious figure known as “The Master,” she finds herself gaining powers that allow her to live a new life but it has dark effects on her and everyone else in the town.

One thing I probably should mention is that I’ve known Larry Fessenden for a long time -- a friend of mine co-starred in his early movie Habit -- and I’m just a huge fan of Barbara Crampton from her classic horror films and more recent ones like my pal Ted Geoghegan’s We Are Still Here, which starred both of the actors.. And was produced by director Travis Stevens. See, how it all comes together?

This is another movie I don’t want to say too much about, as to not spoil your enjoyment of watching the various elements coming into place. Fessenden and Crampton are great as always, but I particularly like how Stevens has made a fairly contemporary horror movie that throws back to classic tropes like Cronenberg body horror and straight-out giallo blood flying everywhere.

I will say that the story involves a bit of a twist on the vampire movie, but more in vein of the weirdness from that 1988 Nicholas Cage movie, Vampire’s Kiss, versus anything like a studio Dracula movie, but it gives the two actors (especially Crampton) a chance to shine and really show different aspects of their abilities. Oh, also there’s lots of rats… lots and lots of rats...

Jakob’s Wife is a pretty fine independent horror film that certainly will deal a number of shrieks and squeals, and though it’s opening in theaters, On Demand and digital, much like most of RLJEfilms/Shudder’s offerings, I wish there were more of the local genre movie houses in which to watch it with a crowd cause even the SXSW Premiere probably wasn’t the same without an audience. Sigh, when will this fucking pandemic be over?!?

Oh, and by the way, I have an interview with Stevens over at Below the Line, so check that out to learn more.

Before we get to the rest of the new movies, let’s check out what’s going on at a few of my local digs, the Metrograph and Film Forum. Metrograph is just wrapping up another Aaron Sorkin retrospective, just three movies this time that wrapped with The Trial of the Chicago 7 (again) last night. On Friday, you can catch Thomas Vinterberg’s Oscar-nominated Another Round, starring Mads Mikkelsen, running as part of its digital Live Screenings series… I keep saying and will keep saying until you list. It’s $5 a month to join and watch a ton of cool movies!

Michael and Christian Blackwood’s Monk in Europe runs until next Monday and then there’s a few others also running through the weekend. Just click on that link above and join already!

At the Film Forum, Hitchcock’s great Rear Window is just wrapping up today, and I’m bummed I didn’t get a chance to see it on the big screen again. Starting Friday is Alec Guinness and Kind Hearts and Coronets, which had a pretty successful run at Film Forum in the before-times. The doc Gunda (right below) is also starting there in its reopened theaters as is the Norwegian Oscar entry Hope, starring the always great Stellan Skarsgard.

Victor (Aquarela) Kossakovsky’s acclaimed documentary GUNDA (NEON), which played most of the festivals last year is finally getting a bonafide theatrical release. It’s a black and white cinema verité that follows the lives of a number of farm animals, a mother pig, some chickens and a herd of cows. As a fan of The Biggest Little Farm, this is a movie that I’m apt to enjoy since I love nature docs, but it also involves staring at a screen (mostly my TV set) watching animals, which I really have to be in the right mood for, and it’s really been tough to get into that mood in the past year.

Sebastian Stan and Denise Gough star in Argyris Papadimitropoulos’s MONDAY (IFC Films) as Americans living in Athens who meet and have a whirlwind weekend one hot summer. Gough plays Chloe, whose time in Greece is coming to an end, but she has to decide whether to pass up a big job back home to see if the weekend she had with Stan’s Mickey is worth exploring and turning into something more serious. I do hope to get to this one eventually, but who knows when?

Gabriel Carrer and Reese Eveneshen’s FOR THE SAKE OF VICIOUS (Dread) stars Lora Burke as Romina (Lora Burke), single mother and nurse, who returns home after a late shift on Halloween night to find a maniac hiding in her home with a beat-up hostage. When a mob of intruders invade Romina’s home, the three have to work together to survive. The movie will hit theaters on Friday, be available via On Demand on Tuesday and then hit Blu-ray on May 4, so you’ll have lots of options to see it.

Barry Pepper stars in Brad (“24,” “Homeland”) Turner’s TRIGGER POINT (Screen Media), which will hit theaters this Friday and be On Demand on April 23. In it, he plays retired U.S. special operative Nicolas Brazer, who worked as a shadow assassin for the government but disappeared into a life of solitude after being accused of killing his team. Two years later, he’s drawn back into the world to clear his name and maybe turn a new leaf.

I don’t have a ton to say about this film, especially cause we just saw it in a much better version of this movie called Nobody. Pepper’s a great actor and that’s probably what saves Trigger Point from being a total loss, but it’s a fairly dry by-the-books crime thriller with a fairly generic plot that we’ve seen plenty of times before and often quite a bit better.

Also out this week is Christo Brock’s craft beer documentary BREWMANCE (Giant Pictures), which looks at… you guessed it… the history and obsession that a number of brewers have with craft beer. This is a fine doc, but like Gunda, I have to be in the right mood for it, and I’m just so busy that I never was able to just sit down and just concentrate on watching this.

Alan Yuen, the screenwriter of New Police Storyand director of Firestorm return with THE ROOKIES (Shout! Studios!), starring Alu Wang and Milla Jovovich. Wang plays daredevil and extreme sports lover Zhao Feng, who gets caught up in an illegal trade scheme when he crosses paths with Jovovich’s Special Agent Bruce and she recruits him for the Order of the Phantom Knighthood. The group is dedicated to fighting evil in all its incarnations, and it’s a ragtag outfit of four rookies with different skills. This sounds like my kind of jam, and at any other time, I would have had more time to watch and review it. Two weeks before the Oscars is not that time.

Devereux Millburn’s HONEYDEW (Dark Star Pictures/Bloody Disgusting) stars Sawyer Spielberg and Malin Barr as a young couple forced to seek shelter in the home of an aging farmer (Barbara Kingsley from “Jessica Jones”) and her odd son until they start having strange hallucinations and cravings. It’s a little odd that two horror sites, Dread Central and Bloody Disgusting, have movies out this week as they venture in distribution. But I just didn’t have time to see either movie. Sorry, guys!

And then the other movies I wasn’t able to get to this week include:

BEAST BEAST (Vanishing Angle)

VANQUISH (Lionsgate)

NIGHT OF THE SICARIO (Saban Films)

BILL TRAYLOR: CHASING GHOSTS (Kino Lorber)

OUR TOWNS (HBO/HBO Max)

GOODBYE BUTTERFLY (Gravitas Ventures)

That’s it for this week. Next week is actually the release of the new Mortal Kombat from Warner Bros. although I’m expecting a very busy weekend with awards over at Below the Line, so we’ll see how far I get. Wish me luck!

[5thinvictus]

The Strain 4x05: A Write Up

Disclaimer:  The point of this is not to belittle or undermine anyone else’s interpretation or headcanon of the episode.  The point of this is simply to get it off my chest.  This is in no way an attack or a troll.  It’s simply what I do after episodes, I just normally attach it with GIFs.

As MANY people in this fandom already know ... I’ve never been a Tasa shipper, but I accepted the relationship as a part of Quinlan’s life which allowed him to grow and feel.

I admit, full-heartedly, that The Strain is no longer a good TV show, but until now it was a HELL of a guilty pleasure. I watched it despite some part of myself understanding that it was bad, because I dug some of the characters and actors. I spent a LOT OF TIME pushing the show and creating content for it. I even spent nearly all of my time at SDCC doing so, knowing it wasn’t critically acclaimed or anything. However, this past episode wasn’t a guilty pleasure. This past episode, the creators actually insulted my intelligence a bit.

From the truck action (there were a few cool bits, but i.e. Quinlan falling to the truck for SEVERAL seconds, as the strigoi looks CONFUSED at him before getting cut in half. The wire was REALLY high up. It would have been so much cooler if Q had ducked under it at the perfect time) to the flashbacks to the unnecessary meandering dialogue/romance with Eph and his new lady friend (did we need that scene at all? There are only 5 episodes left and … what was the point of it all?), to Eph just letting that woman go to become the Master and know his location ... the writing and direction in this episode was scattered all over the place.  ಠ_ಠ

I could likely go on for pages about the rest of the episode, but I’m not going to rant about anything in this post except the flashbacks and their personal impact on me.

Quinlan: out of Character? Perhaps ... Perhaps not.

The Strain is a bit notorious for not being able to keep any of their own characters straight. I think this might be because of the wide range of writers and I know this happens on TV shows because of that fact, but they flip-flop back in forth for everyone, with the only exceptions being Abraham and possibly Mr. Quinlan. Until now.

The flashbacks.

Very simply put, I would have accepted this all better if he was younger. That’s the crux of my problem with it. Not Louisa. Not that Louisa isn’t Tasa. Not that they’ve, once again, changed canon. I’ve read some arguments for this behavior that conjecture he was just "curious" and he had talked about being “curious” in Rome two thousand years prior. But that was when he was very young. If you follow the canon timeline, he was in his late teens or early 20s in that scene.

That was when he was STILL trying to figure out humans. In this scene, he is 1848 years old (1888 A.D. - 40 A.D.). Take a moment to fathom that number. 1848 years old. If human’s average lifespan is around 70 … that is a little more than 26 lifetimes. At this point in the story, he has lived 26 lifetimes. He has traveled the world, leading the life of a demigod undead hunter, integrating with societies all over. He was a gladiator, which meant he was likely used for sexual purposes. He would not be as curious as a schoolboy, or confused by a woman painting his face. Makeup is not a new invention. Over 1848 years, it’s ludicrous to think that he hasn’t TRIED to paint the strigoi out of himself before.

What I find the most hard to swallow about this scene is not that they replaced Tasa with Louisa or that they gave him a woman at all. I don’t care either way. It is that he acted like a child for most of the flashback. When the little girl ran in and met him, he acted like he’d never met a child before … Wait what?

So, if they had done this "love story" in Rome or sometime around that part of his past, I would have actually bought into it, because he was still on his first lifetime and he was still trusting, and curious, and childish, and … naive.

This leads me back to my headcanon about it. Louisa and her daughter remind him of Tasa and Sura, so he bought into the "romance," or the “idea” of it. He’s been alone for a long time and he’s grown tired and this woman pops out of nowhere and offers him a chance to revisit what he had lost so long ago, then maybe he would be more open to … moving in with her after a couple of days / weeks? (I agree with @theforgottensheikah on this. I fully understand they are rushed, but some kind of montage would have made it seem like more time had passed? The quickness was terribly OoC).

Expectation vs. Execution: The scene itself

Intimacy + Bonding vs. Strange Stinger Kink + Porno Moans

IMHO, this was weird. He’s feeding on her. There’s no kiss, there’s no intimacy, there’s no bonding.

They could have made that scene very sexy and made the audience feel the emotion that was supposedly there (even with the unbelievable Quinlan makeup) by having something like:

Forehead or nose touches (I fucking love these, sorry).

Quinlan refusing at first, telling her he didn’t want to hurt her, expressing concern for her.

Kissing … good lord, some kind of kissing.

Twitching and rattling with excitement over just the possibility of touching her.

I’m not daft or a fool. I get what they were trying to convey, but it fell flat. I’m not a crazy fangirl because I was more than open to see this. I DIDN’T MISS THE POINT AT ALL. But I wanted to see some intimacy. I wanted to see how Rupert would convey that intimacy. I was excited to possibly see Quinlan kissing someone.

IT … FELL … FLAT and then they made it weird.

He drinks her. Hmmm. To him, humans are food. To him, humans have always been food. 1848 years of food food food. I get that she’s got the kink and he conforms to it, but that’s not his kink He does what she asks but I’ve never been a huge vampire/blood play fan because … You like a good steak, but that doesn’t mean you want to fuck the cow, and if you are fucking the cow, doesn’t mean you are eating them at the same time. This disappointed me because it’s an incredibly clichéd vampire trope and I would hope that someone like Quinlan would be beyond it, especially at his age.

Also, I want to point out something particularly poignant here. Given how he reacted to the Master reminding him of Ancharia in 2x07, her death is still very much an open wound. So, I would think that being encouraged to drink from Louisa would be uncomfortable for him, to say the least. Since the Master forced him to drink the last known human that he cared for to survive, this scenario should actually be quite traumatic to him.

And, why would he want to drink someone he loves, especially after she just told him he was more beautiful as a human than a strigoi?  Isn’t that confusing?  She just painted him up like a human and then told him to drink her like a strigoi.  I digress ...

When I watched this part of the episode, I wasn’t crying, I wasn’t angry, I wasn’t even cringing. When I watched this part of the episode, I started laughing. This is no exaggeration. Even my husband asked me what I was ‘cackling’ about because these flashbacks played as if I was watching them re-enact a bad fanfiction. After it was over, I was more embarrassed and a bit creeped out about being a fan than angry or even disappointed.

What ran through my head was:

Oh good god. Is this what the show runners think of us?

Someone who accepts him in all of his unique beauty vs. Someone who tells him he needs to be human to be beautiful

I don’t need to touch on this subject as many already have. Instead, I’ll let Guillermo del Toro speak for all of us:

Well, I have said this in the past, so I hope i don’t bore you by repeating it, but I think that we live or die under the tyranny of perfection. Socially, we are pushed towards being perfect. Physically, beautiful to conform to standards that are cruel and uncommon, to behave and lead our lives in a certain way, to demonstrate to the world that we are happy and healthy and all full of sunshine. We are told to always smile and never sweat, by multiple commercials of shampoo or beer.

And I feel that the most achievable goal of our lives is to have the freedom that imperfection gives us.

And there is no better patron saint of imperfection than a monster.

We will try really hard to be angels, but I think that a balanced, sane life is to accept the monstrosity in ourselves and others as part of what being human is. Imperfection, the acceptance of imperfection, leads to tolerance and liberates us from social models that I find horrible and oppressive.

— Guillermo del Toro, on why he has always been intrigued by monsters

Passive vs. Submissive vs. Dominant

Quinlan was uncharacteristically passive in this episode. HE WAS THE SEXY LAMP THIS TIME. From Ancharia to Rome to modern day, he’s never been this passive. Even when he was working with Abe, he was still contributing and arguing.

This breaks the continuity of his characterization.

Aside

For those comparing him to Dracula AND/OR Lestat and using that as a basis for belittling others into loving what they saw: I didn’t pick Mr. Quinlan because he reminded me of other critically acclaimed vampires.  I picked Mr. Quinlan as my favorite fictional character because he was uniquely interesting and beautiful.

I chose him because of how intriguing and new he looked, how he acted and how Mr. Penry-Jones portrayed him.  I picked him because he was different than any other vampire/dhampir/nephilim I had ever seen.  Comparing what they did to him with other vampires, regardless of how I feel about those other character, actually cheapens his uniqueness for me.

Also, Gary Oldman was a shapeshifter in that movie and thus, it was well within my suspension of disbelief that he could change the contours of his face to look entirely human.

Now ... Understanding Your Fanbase

Part of the reason I, and many more fans, like the character of Quinlan is because he doesn’t conform to modern beauty standards. I loved that he wasn’t your average handsome, makeup-laden (cough - Twilight) vampire hunk. I loved that he was unique and complex. They took one of the most important aspects of his character and they wanted us to buy into a rushed and botched romance with a woman who wanted to fundamentally change him. Tasa fan or not, it’s very clear why this bothered people.

Would you and SHOULD YOU be with someone who convinced you that you needed to get plastic surgery?  I guess, since this is made by ‘Hollywood’, then this is an acceptable thing in that space?

In Conclusion: 4x05

No, we did not miss the point. No, we aren’t being stupid fangirls who don’t want to share Quinlan. The fact is, we just aren’t that gullible. Many of the people in this fandom have written their own fics, whether it be explicit or not, whether it be with an original character or Tasa or another canon character.

An impressive amount of us have actually sat down and put pen to paper in an attempt to characterize Quinlan. This is a difficult thing to do, because we like to think that he’s incredibly complex and mysterious. But, everyone is free to have their own interpretation of him.

Mini rant: Why does The Strain always make their female characters so sexually aggressive?  From Nora ripping Eph’s clothes off in the middle of an episode, to Anya being the one to invite Gus into her warm bosom, to Dutch VERY AGGRESSIVELY seducing both Fet and Eph, to Louisa begging for it?  Is this really the only type of woman that exist in this world?

In Further Conclusion: Quinlan and The Strain Fandom

I’ve never been a superfan of anything in my life and, while it has been a phenomenally creative outlet, the toxicity and ugliness of the current fandom makes me realize that I’ve got to get back to being an adult now. At the end of the day, it’s just any old terrible TV show and they’ve decided to remove the one thing that was inspiring me to continue watching and the bragging that it’s only going to get worse only tires me more.

It’s absolutely no secret that if the Strain didn’t have Quinlan in it, I would have stopped watching it halfway through season 3. It was all over the place, from the plot holes, strange character direction, and … of course … the treatment of women.

On that note, allow me a tiny tangent.  Something has seemed significantly off about the Strain since it came back together to film Season 4. Speculation on the cause of this tepidness shown from the creators, crew, and actors has driven mad speculation throughout the remaining members of the dwindling fandom.

What was going on that no one wanted to say anything? Was it that good that they didn’t want to spoil anything or … was it that bad that people are actually embarrassed about their contractual involvement? Why wasn’t the cast promoting it very much anymore? Why wasn’t the social media team themselves promoting it very much? Why weren’t there any teasers or anything to drive anticipation. And … most importantly … where the fuck did Guillermo del Toro go?!?

While we’re desperate to know why everything seemingly fizzled out, as just ‘simple fans’ who’s opinions don’t matter, we will never be privy to such information. If anyone has any insight into this and they’d like to share with me as a parting gift, please do so. It would be a private conversation.

I’ve been putting far too much passion into promoting and generating content for this show and after the atrocity that was the last episode (and the manner in which people reacted to criticism of the episode), I’ll be taking an indefinite hiatus from further involvement in this fandom. (Indefinite: lasting for an unknown or unstated length of time.) After all, I’m just a ‘simple fan’, and the only way that I can really show my disdain for the misdirection is by boycotting further direct involvement in the fandom.

WAIT! WAIT! WHAT ABOUT THE GODDAMN FIC!?!

。゜゜(´Ｏ｀)°゜。

I do not regret the time I’ve put into this as it gave me the confidence to reach beyond what I thought I was capable of and it drove me to start writing finally. I don’t even regret that the Strain was terrible in Season 3, because the best fanfic actually comes out of terrible shows (for obvious reasons). And regardless of what happens next in the show (which I am politely declining to watch further), no one can EVER take away the headcanon that I’ve created for myself and my version of Quinlan. Overall, I am incredibly proud of the characters that I built and the fandom that I have for my own interpretation.

With that being said, the latest episode was amazingly uninspiring and it kinda murdered my muse a bit. I will see what I can do about that. I promise. And if there is enough interest in me continuing it, I will.

Now, my fierce and lovely fandom … prepare yourselves for one final and epic commission for Straining for Originality. I’d wanted to wait until the chapter, but fuck it all …

Gif by @quintustheinvictus

[justanothercinemaniac]

Epic Movie (Re)Watch #163 - The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen

Spoilers Below

Have I seen it before: Yes

Did I like it then: It’s a guilty pleasure.

Do I remember it: Yes.

Did I see it in theaters: No.

Format: Blu-ray

1) This is (or was, not so sure after this viewing) a quintessential guilty pleasure movie for me. I’m a sucker for crossovers and old monsters, so even though this team isn’t EXCLUSIVELY monsters the presence of Dr. Jekyll/Mr. Hyde, a why-is-she-a-vampire? Mina Harker, a not-Griffin Invisible Man, and Dorian Grey make the film as much of a guilty pleasure as Van Helsing for me. That’d make for a good guilty pleasure double feature.

2) I get this dude has never seen a tank before, but how stupid can he be?

3) I have a feeling Germany would not actually say this verbatim in a situation like this.

4) So I absolutely love the idea of taking The Phantom of the Opera and making him into the big bad technical war-mongering genius the League has to fight in this film. I love the idea, but I feel the execution is a little sloppy. Combining The Phantom’s with James Moriarty utterly takes away any sympathy we have for the character. In Gaston Leorux’s original novel, The Phantom was a figure of tragedy and heartache. I would’ve loved to see more of that side of him, to understand why The Phantom wants to start a World War and what that pain means for him. But instead we get sort of the cliché, “bad guy wants to start war to get rich,” scheme which may be very much in the vein of Moriarty but not in the vein of the Phantom of the Opera.

5) Sean Connery as...

According to IMDb:

Sean Connery was offered roles in The Matrix (1999) and The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring (2001), but said he didn't understand the scripts. So when offered another screenplay he didn't quite get, (LEG) he took it.

Connery hated working on this film. Absolutely hated it. There were constant production delays and he clashed frequently with director Stephen Norrington (who also hated working on the film, mainly from studio pressures). Connery has retired from acting pretty much because of this film. It was this film which convinced him that he’d fallen out of love with modern filmmaking. In the 14 years since LXG’s release Connery has only had two other acting roles: voicing James Bond in a video game version of From Russia with Love and as the titular character in the poorly received animated film Sir Billi.

Among the many liberties the film takes with the source material, it removes a lot of Quatermaine’s flaws. Yes the pain of losing his son is a nice source of conflict for the character, but this dude was messed up in the original story. His primary character flaw being his addiction to opium, but Connery refused to play an opium addict. The decision to remove this sort of defining flaw makes Connery’s portrayal of the character sort of a generic action hero, at least that’s how I feel. He’s pretty much playing Sean Connery, for better or worse. He never does anything totally unexpected or unique (again, in my opinion) and that hurts the film I think. Connery’s fine in the part. Again, he’s pretty much playing himself. It’s not worthy of a Razzie or anything. But it’s just...fine.

6) There are some really awful bits of dialogue in this film, not helped by exceptionally wooden delivery on some occasion.

Sanderson Reed [as a shootout begins]: “They’re indestructible!”

Allan: “No, just armor plated.”

7) One of the most interesting aspects of Quatermaine is his skills as a hunter and later his sharing of those skills with Tom Sawyer (more on that later). It is a side to him I wish we could’ve seen more of. Patient, steady, able to get off one good shot instead of a dozen fine ones.

(GIFs originally posted by @mercisnm)

8) There are so many random name drops and references in this film which are just done to remind you you’re in a world of fictional characters. Some of them work, but some of them feel REALLY awkward.

Allan [after Reed says he made good time to London]: “Not as good as Phileas Fogg. Around the world in 80 days? Ha!”

So basically you referenced something and then thought the audience was too stupid to get the reference and just said the name of the book. Great.

9) Richard Roxburgh as M/The Phantom/Moriarty

This film is FILLED with talented character actors and Roxburgh is one of them. In fact, he’s one of the finest character actors around. With notable roles in Van Helsing, Moulin Rouge, and the lead role in “Rake” (Australian TV show), Roxburgh is able to play a wide array of interesting characters. While this film may lack in some plot and structure, there are a number of performances which I find extraordinary (no pun intended). Roxburgh is able to play the calm and collected gentlemen M, the mad warlord The Phantom, and the conniving scoundrel James Moriarty all in the same character. Three different opportunities shown in one character, all of which done totally and excellently. If only the script would support these opportunities and differences better.

10) In continuing the theme of fine (fine as in exquisite, not fine as in “it’s just fine”) character actors in the movie: Naseeruddin Shah as...

(GIF originally posted by @barbara-stanwyck)

Hey would you look at that: an actual Indian actor playing a character who was originally written as Indian in a major Hollywood film from 14 years ago! What a concept!

Shah is another actor who is pretty damn great in the role he plays, if only the script would have supported it more. He is able to portray Nemo’s authority and skill in presence alone. When Captain Nemo enters the room you KNOW he’s someone you don’t want to mess with. He is powerful, reserved, but also able to convey Nemo’s pain when necessary. Honestly for all this films problems there are some members of the cast who I just truly love, and Shah as Nemo is one of them.

11) Another member of the cast I think just freaking nails it is Tony Curran as Rodney Skinner/An Invisible Man (not THE Invisible Man, but more on that later).

According to IMDb:

20th Century Fox was unable to get the rights for the literary character of The Invisible Man, created by H.G. Wells. Not only did this necessitate the character in the film have his name changed from the book's "Griffin", but that he could never be referred to as "the" Invisible Man, only "an" invisible man.

Honestly the change works much better than you might think as Skinner is one of the most likable characters in the film. Curran is able to make his charismatic, devilish, witty, and entertaining for someone who is typically never seen. Unfortunately he sorta disappears around the middle (and the film is worse for it), but Curran is another talented character actor who does an excellent job in the film.

12) Peta Wilson as Mina Harker.

So...Mina...I don’t really know where to start with Mina. She’s the leader of the League in the original graphic novel, not Alan Quartermaine. She also is NOT a vampire, is dealing with trauma over her encounter with Dracula, and is seen to be a bisexual suffragist (or at least, Alan Moore’s understanding of what that is). A lot of that is lost in the film, and while her vampirism does lead to some badass moments Mina’s motivations are...I’m not sure, actually. I would assume she wants to stop the spread of evil throughout the world to prevent another Dracula, but she has some weird past romance with Dorian Gray and gets sassy with Allan when he acts sexist and...that’s it? Wilson is another strong character actor in the film, but I feel the script supports her even less than it supports say Captain Nemo and Skinner. I’m actually not sure what else to say about Mina.

13) Why does Sean Connery play so many sexist characters?

Connery [to Mina]: “I’ve had women along on past exploits and found them at best a distraction.

Maybe if you didn’t objectify them and trusted their competence you wouldn’t be so distracted.

14) So if you pay attention, right before The League visits Dorian Gray there are newspapers plastered up on the wall of a building talking about Mars (pretty much the words “Mars” is really big). This is in reference to the second volume of the comic book which dealt with The League fighting off HG Welles’ aliens from War of the Worlds. I like that volume more than the first personally, but like a lot (if not all) of Alan Moore’s work it can be problematic. Anyway, moving on.

15) Dorian Gray.

Unfortunately I feel like Stuart Townsend is one of the weakest actors in the film as Dorian, but that could also be attributed to Stephen Norrington’s direction (theoretically, it’s not like I was on set or anything). He’s kind of overact-y, portraying Dorian’s self assuredness and vanity in a way which kind of makes him a prick. Another character not originally in the novel, I don’t think the film necessarily needed Dorian Gray. Although he does have one of my favorite lines in the film.

Bad guy [after he shoots up Dorian to no effect]]: “What are you?”

Dorian: “I’m complicated.”

16) Tom Sawyer.

Tom Sawyer is pretty much Tom Sawyer in name alone. He has little-to-nothing in common with Mark Twain’s original character, being a secret service agent instead of a devious little trickster who’s always getting out of work. The studio asked for him to be included as they felt the movie needed an American character to be interesting to stateside audiences. Since he’s not in the original work and he’s not really Tom Sawyer, he ends up being kind of another generic action trope. A shoot-em-up rookie who learns from the more experienced Quatermaine and that’s it. They cut a line which explains that Tom is so desperate to get The Phantom/M/Moriarty because he killed his partner (one Huck Finn) but that’s literally his only unique motivating character factor. And it got cut. It’s done and gone. So we’re just left with...this. Shane West is OK in the film, but the script doesn’t give him much to do in the first place.

17) I’m disappointed with the design of the Nautilus.

Nemo calls it, “The sword of the ocean,” and I’m just wondering if they couldn’t have let that be a bit more metaphorical instead of looking like a giant sword.

18) At one point Mina does an impression of Allan/Sean Connery. According to IMDb:

According to Wilson, this was a last-minute addition to the scene, and she felt nervous doing it, since Connery impersonations were considered a no-no on the set. Before the shoot she called Connery and offered not to do the accent, but he insisted she should. Afterwards, she asked him what he thought. He replied, "You were great!" She was taken aback and asked if he really meant it. He said, "Yeah, it's terrible! It's the worst impersonation I have ever heard, and it's perfect."

19) Jason Flemyng as Dr. Jekyll/Mr. Hyde.

Jason Flemyng is another one of my favorite character actors - having notable post-LXG roles in X-Men First Class and 2010′s Clash of the Titans - and may tie with Tony Curran as my favorite actor in this film. Flemyng is able to capture both Jekyll and Hyde very well, making them unique in and of themselves. I have to remind myself that they’re the same actor considering the heavy amount of makeup Flemyng is put into for Hyde. But he brings a wonderful physicality to the part which I think is just spectacular. Unfortunately - again - the script does very little to support his performance and the actor gets a little lost in the middle. A great performance even if I wish it were better written.

20) Gathering the League feels totally inorganic, unfortunately. Literally the first half of the film is, “let’s get him and let’s get him and let’s get him,” without actually contributing to the overall plot with The Phantom and the impending World War. It is very telling of the film’s biggest problem and that is the one it has with structure and pacing. Everything feels very messy, with not much thought put into why some scenes exist or play out the way they do. Which is unfortunate again because you have a mostly-stellar cast who are already pretty damn good with a crummy script. Imagine what they could do with a better one.

21) Allan teaching Tom how to shoot maybe my favorite part of the film. It not only connects to Allan’s own internal conflict with the loss of his son but it also taught me - at 13 years old - how important patience can be. Just breathe and take your time. It’s better to get off one perfect shot than a dozen shitty ones.

22) So in the course of about ten minutes it is established that both Tom and Jekyll are into Mina even though nothing from before gives them reason to be and they never once revisit it after. Remember how I said this film had some structural issues? Well it has some developmental issues too.

23) This film is an hour and fifty minutes. It takes them fifty-five minutes to get to Venice - where they’ve been trying to get to the whole time - and then the bomb goes off right away (literally) and they have to stop it. The plot is literally: assemble the league, go to Venice, get to Venice and stop the disaster. Nothing in between. Again: this film has some major structural issues.

24)

Jekyll [after he’s asked to bring Hyde out]: “No! Hyde will never use me again.”

Dorian: “Then what good are you?”

(GIF originally posted by @marshmallow-the-vampire-slayer)

Seriously, why did they bring Jekyll around? Did they only need Hyde? And if so, for what? I know M wants the serum for Hyde but what about the rest of them? What convinced them to bring Hyde along and then be okay with him not doing anything on their big mission?

25) Another example of an extremely wooden delivery. This line hurts my soul every time, although in fairness Dorian himself is supposed to be faking it.

Dorian: “Damn Skinner! He must’ve told them we were coming!”

It hurts my ears, that line. I hate it. So much.

26) I have so many questions about the car chase through Venice. How does Tom know to drive a car? Why is the car designed like it’s American with the wheel on the left? How can Nemo track the car’s “frequency”? Who does the car have a frequency, it is never seen using the radio? I’m so confused.

27) This is the weirdest James Bond movie ever.

Allan: “Vampire lady has us covered.”

28) The scene where Alan faces off with The Phantom in the Venice graveyard is close to interesting. If The Phantom were more developed as an individual and it took its time to peek into Alan’s internal conflict, it could’ve been an excellent character moment.

29)

M [revealing his entire plan via a record]: “It was a ruse to get me closer to my goal.”

(GIF source unknown [if this is your GIF please let me know].)

So M wanted the technology to the Nautilus, Hyde’s serum, Mina’s vampirism, and Griffin’s invisibility. And here’s how that plan worked: rob an English bank disguised as Germans, kidnap German scientists disguised as the English, try to convince Quatermaine to join a fake League I made up, try to kill Quatermaine to show him the danger is real, send the League I have already to get Dorian who is a traitor in their midst, try to kill them all with Dorian to convince them the danger is real, have Dorian steal what I need from everyone, blow up Venice, have Dorian escape.

(GIF originally posted by @dailydctv)

If you already had Dorian and an army of minions at your service, couldn’t you have sent them to get what you need from everyone? Wouldn’t that have been easier and less expensive? I’m just...I think I need to move on.

30) The best part of the sinking Nautilus is Jason Flemyng really gets to shine as Hyde. Except it makes no sense that Hyde suddenly doesn’t want to betray and murder everyone for his own personal gain but actually wants to work with the team. There was absolutely nothing to change that character motivation. At all.

31) 

Quatermaine [after the Nautilus is trashed, about pursuing Dorian]: “We were the faster, but now we’re the tortoise to his hare.”

Except the tortoise won that race. Did you not understand the point of the story?

32) And then a random white tiger shows up, stares at Quatermaine, and leaves.

(GIF source unknown [if this is your GIF please let me know].)

I know it’s supposed to tie into how Allan feels his an old tiger sensing the end but it’s also just totally random. And like, did you need an actual tiger? There’s no subtly to that. At all. You’re just taking the metaphor literally and not trusting the intelligence of the audience. I just...gah.

33)

Skinner [after slapping Mina’s as while invisible]: “I’ve been waiting all week to do that.”

To sexually harass her? Well, you’re still not as awful as how Alan Moore wrote The Invisible Man in the story.

34) Like all the set pieces in this film, the climax is poorly paced and sort of dull. You keep cutting between Hyde and Nemo fighting a weird Hyde clone (which, btw, is not how the serum works in the original novel; it’s not Hulk juice), Mina fighting Dorian in a bedroom because she claims, “You broke my heart once,” (really?) Allan and Sawyer chasing down M who is revealed to be Sherlock Holmes’ Moriarty, and Skinner just being somewhere and then getting burned. It’s just...meh.

35) Also should looking at the painting kill Dorian? Is that how it worked in the original novel? I thought if you stabbed the painting it killed him or something.

36) In an actually somewhat developed part of the film, Sawyer shoots Moriarty remembering Allan’s teachings about patience.

37) And then Alan dies, but not really because they wanted to do a sequel and totally set up him coming back from the dead. Too bad this killed the potential of a franchise.

This film was a lot less enjoyable as an adult than it was when I was in high school, but I’m also analyzing it for the (Re)Watch. Yes the story is a muddled mess with underdeveloped characters and concepts which just really don’t make any sense. Yes Sean Connery is sort of just showing up. BUT it’s largely well acted and come one! It’s a film where Tom Sawyer shoots James Moriarty in the back after being taught by Allan Quatermaine how to do it. I’m a sucker for crossovers so this is still a total guilty pleasure. Don’t watch it if you’re not interested, because it’s pretty crummy. But it might be enjoyable for the individual who’s interested in these kind of stories.

[imsarabum]

{PART 16} I Won’t Stop You // Jeon Jungkook, Vampire!AU

Pairing: Jungkook x Reader

Genre: Vampire!AU, Fantasy, Angst, Smut

Summary; You begin to regret revealing all the details about your painful, tragic past to Jungkook. Meanwhile, Jungkook, Taehyung and Jimin share their knowledge with each other in the hopes of figuring out what intentions lie behind Yoongi’s actions.

I update this series every Tuesday evening, 9pm-10pm (UK Time)

{Part 1} // {Part 15} {Part 16} {Part 17}

“He’s evil. He’ll find you, (Y/N). Stay away. Stay away”

As you sat in silence beside Jungkook in his car – currently on route to Taehyung’s boutique to pick up your dress for the ball later on that evening; Jungkook replayed the words you heard from your brother each time you paid him a visit. Jungkook may have seemed quiet to you on the outside, but inside his mind was the loudest it had ever been with the thought of; what in the devils name did your brother mean by ‘...he’ll find you, (Y/N)’?

“Yoongi was locked away for thirteen years – ever since he murdered my (Y/N)’s parents...” Jungkook pressed his foot down on the gas pedal, his thoughts racing over a hundred miles an hour in his brain as he tried to decipher if there was any meaning to your brothers terrifying words. “Has Yoongi broken out to come and finish what he started? Has he come straight to (Y/N) because it would be impossible to get to Cassidy in the psychiatric hospital?” he languished to himself. Jungkook knew that there was no way on earth that Yoongi would be able to go to any establishment such as a psychiatric unit – for every single Vampire in the world was on high-alert for him. Jungkook could put his mind at ease, knowing that if Yoongi so much as stepped a foot inside a public establishment such as the one your brother resided in; he would risk getting caught, which would undoubtedly lead to his complete and utter downfall. Jungkook had since concluded that his older cousin was of course a fool – but he wasn’t so stupid as to recklessly let himself get caught like that.

“I HAVE to relay all of this to Taehyung...maybe he has found out the reason as to why (Y/N)’s touch seems to make us...feel alive?” he pondered. Yet, amidst his confusion and worry for your wellbeing, Jungkook couldn’t help but feel completely defeated at your description of Vampires as ‘monsters’. He longed to tell you – to let you know who he really was. He desired for nothing more than to just completely open up to you and let you in on his deepest, darkest secret. “After the ball...I can’t keep this from her any longer” he had concluded. Jungkook had made up his mind that if he was going to fully expose himself as something you considered to be a monster from some type of fairytale, he was going to at least have one last, spell-bounding night with you. So that – even if you did end up running a mile away from him in the opposite direction; Jungkook would have this final memory of you to cherish – so long as his immortal being should live.

You knew that something was off with Jungkook since you both got up together, earlier that morning. After waking up in Jungkook’s arms for the fifth consecutive day in a row, it had become almost second nature to be met by his warm, charming smile; followed by several feverish, yet tender kisses to your lips as a means to say ‘good morning.’ However, upon looking up into his face this morning, you were greeted by complete silence – with only a small, chaste kiss to your forehead before Jungkook told you what time you would both be departing for Taehyung’s at. Usually, you felt swaddled in layers of felicity and bliss in his presence; but you began to feel more regretful as the car journey went by. You noticed that Jungkook seemed more distant than before – only speaking to you when you spoke to him or when he needed to tell you something of importance to do with the ball.

“Is it...because of my past?” you began to eat your own heart out at such thoughts. “Maybe he thinks my brother and I are crazy too...” you lamented – before deciding that enough was enough and that you were going to try and clear the uncomfortable atmosphere between you both. Jungkook had since become too important to you, and you knew that you were the type of person who would always fight for what they wanted.

“Jungkook” you spoke up, breaking the silence in the car.

“Hmm?” Jungkook hummed, still deeply lost in his thoughts that plagued him so.

“Look...maybe me telling you about my past was a mistake. I’m sorry if I made you think differently of me, or if you feel weird around me now – but I felt like you needed to know since –“

“(Y/N) – what on earth are you talking about?” Jungkook immediately interrupted you, being able to sense the nervousness in your vitals from a mile off. You turned your head to him slowly, watching his eyes glance back and forth between concentrating on the road and concentrating on you.

“It just feels like you’ve been quiet and awkward around me since I told you last night. You know...this is exactly the reason why I don’t tell anyone about what happened to my parents” your voice dipped in sadness as you genuinely thought that your tale of blood and woe had completely and utterly turned Jungkook off from you.

Jungkook’s throat produced an exasperated sigh. He began opening and closing his mouth in an attempt to gather the correct words to convey to you that his silence, although it did concern you, wasn’t due to his feelings for you changing; for they remained just as strong, if not even stronger.

“You’re so wrong, (Y/N). You couldn’t be more wrong if you tried” he spoke back in a deep yet caring, baritone whisper that caught your attention. “I’m...I’m honoured that you felt like you could trust me enough to open up to me. I feel...grateful? I feel grateful to be the only person you’ve ever shared your secrets with. Do you honestly think that something like that would make me love you any less?” Jungkook blurted out as his hand placed itself on top of yours that were folded neatly, yet shyly in your lap.

You looked down to his hand on top of yours – watching the way he lovingly squeezed it as his words resounded in your mind. You didn’t know why, but you were so overcome with so many emotions that you just began welling up. You didn’t want to cry in front of him as you feared looking weak – but your tears only evoked even stronger feelings from Jungkook of wanting to shield you from everything you had been enduring thus far.

“Please don’t cry my love...” Jungkook murmured softly as he felt you clutch on to his hand like a child would to their father. “The reason why I’ve been so quiet...is because I feel so terrible that I didn’t know any of this. Knowing that you had to go through it alone – with no one else to carry the burden with you...makes me feel so rotten inside. Forgive me – I didn’t mean to cause any shrouds of doubt to make their way into your thoughts” Jungkook didn’t lie to you when he reassured you – but he didn’t tell the truth either.

“No, don’t be sorry I just...I was so scared to tell you in case you thought I was some crazy freak with my story about Vampires killing my parents and my brother being in a mental hospital. I’m sorry for overreacting like this. I just...didn’t want you to think any differently of me.” You lay your cards out fully on the table for Jungkook as you began drying your tears with the sleeve of one of your old sweaters you had thrown on you. Jungkook winced as he wanted to just pull the car over and hold you in his arms. He wanted to tell you that he understood the deep fear of the unknown that lurked within you; for it lurked within him too.

“I was thinking to myself earlier...when is the next time you’re due to go and visit Cassidy?” Jungkook decided to try and steer the conversation away from the topic of uncovering hidden secrets.

You glanced outside the window, the thoughts of your brother sailing through your mind. “I was actually meant to go next Sunday. But – with my apartment being flooded and everything else...I was going to leave it until another time” you looked back over towards Jungkook; noticing that his hand was still firmly clasped around yours. “Why?”

Jungkook swallowed hard, blinking softly a few times and thinking carefully about how to word his answer – for he had two important reasons behind asking you about it in the first place. First and foremost, Jungkook was more than curious to see the picture that your brother had been drawing of ‘Dracula.’ In his own way, he wanted to see the drawing for himself to fully confirm the likeness that it may resemble to his older cousin. But – he had opted for telling you the other reason instead.

“If you want, I can drive both of us up there on Sunday. I was thinking that maybe, we could go and see him together?” he replied nonchalantly, as if it were no big deal to him at all.

“Wait – are you serious? You...you actually wanna go there with me? To a psych hospital?” you questioned him with your mouth hanging open slightly and an astonished look present on your face.

“(Y/N), Cassidy is your brother. He’s a part of you – and he’s important to you, yes?” he asked, seeing you nodding your head from out of the corner of his eye.

“Anyone who is important to you is also important to me. You’re...you’re my partner now. Which means Cassidy is included in my list of priorities too.” Jungkook gave your hand one final squeeze before placing it back on the wheel – slowing down ever so slightly as the car began nearing a set of traffic lights. Jungkook had since brooded over the fact that Sid had essentially been locked up for the last thirteen years – much like Yoongi; except Sid did nothing wrong other than unknowingly let a rogue Vampire into his house. Jungkook found himself feeling terribly guilty and responsible – and he wanted to do whatever he could to make up for the fact your brother had to be left with his own tortured thoughts.

You couldn’t stop yourself from letting a sad, sorry smile form on your face in response to his words. “To think I was silly enough to let myself believe he’d be like that” you breathed a tiny sigh of relief. To say that you were taken aback by Jungkook’s request to accompany you to see your brother, would have been a massive understatement. It felt almost like a sliver of hope in the dark, murky waters of your sorrowful mind; your past always trying to drag you down and drown you – and Jungkook being the one to pull you to the surface for air.

“I...thank you, Jungkook. You’ve no idea how much that means to me” you caught his eye as you both passed silent, yet whimsical smiles between each other.

All thoughts of your past, your brother and your bad luck with your apartment all seemed to vacate your train of thought as you stepped out of Jungkook’s car upon arriving at Taehyung’s boutique. Even though you had already seen it before, the cottage’s quaint tranquillity instilled perfect serenity within you. Your eyes twinkled as noticed the gentle lavender of the creeping wisteria that you didn’t even spot last time, and the way it curled around the white, wooden arch at the front door. You also didn’t notice that you had been standing still – smiling like there was no tomorrow; with Jungkook admiring just how truly beautiful you looked in that moment.

“Even though I see her smile often, each smile of hers seems different. Like she’s always evolving...or perhaps I’m just too besotted to come to my senses” Jungkook grinned boyishly to himself as he walked around the car, before beckoning you forward with his hand to join him at the door. As he rang the doorbell, you couldn’t help but notice how – for once, Jungkook seemed less like a CEO, appearing more ‘normal’; as he wore a pair of dark-blue jeans with a simple white shirt and the sleeves slightly rolled up. Looking down at yourself and realising that you were both dressed relatively similar to each other, you turned your head to the side; hiding the small grin that formed on your lips as you thought about how much of a couple you both looked like right then and there.

A few seconds later, you were both met at the door by an overjoyed Taehyung in his black dress pants, a white ruffled shirt with delicately decorated lace, and black braces to match as he clasped his hands together at the image of you both before him. However, the moment that you had both stepped out of Jungkook’s car – a faint, yet potent smell made itself known to both Taehyung and Jimin inside the cottage. Upon opening the door, the smell only got ten times stronger as it was practically radiating off both you and Jungkook. This in turn, left Taehyung with a coy, devilish grin on his face as he greeted you.

“My, my, my! Aren’t you two a sight for sore eyes~” he cooed, opening his arms to welcome you into his embrace. “And I must say, (Y/N) – you smell absolutely...heavenly” Taehyung’s voice dripped with an indelicate meaning as you gave him a quick hug, thinking to yourself “Huh? I didn’t put any perfume on...maybe he’s talking about Jungkook’s shower-gel that I used?” Unbeknownst to you, Taehyung was making direct eye-contact with Jungkook – who picked up on the true intentions behind his words. Jungkook gave him a playful scowl in return; a look that said “Don’t even start.” He knew that Taehyung and Jimin would have been able to pick up on the fact that you both had mated since the last time you all saw each other – thanks to their heightened sense of smell; but also due to the fact that Vampire sex was so powerful and sacred, that it left a hedonistic aroma that lingered for a good twenty-four hours after. Since the last time you and Jungkook were tangled between the sheets was the previous night, the smell was still more than prevalent. And – judging by the smug look on Taehyung’s face, he knew well enough that Jungkook had deflowered you and made you his; in more ways than the obvious.

“It’s so good to see you again, Taehyung” you said as you broke the hug – watching his eyes glisten and twinkle at you. “I can’t tell you how excited I am to see my dress!” you really couldn’t hide your eagerness at this point, making Taehyung giggle like a little boy as he opened the door wide to let you both come inside.

“Likewise my darling – I simply cannot wait to see you in my creation. My ambition certainly lived up to the expectations of my talents; if I do say so myself~” he winked at you as you all made your way across the wooden floor of the shabby-chic boutique.

“Oh and I hope you don’t mind, Jungkook – I took the liberty of picking out a suit to match (Y/N)’s dress for you to wear as well. We can’t have you both looking like a pair of odd socks now, can we?” Taehyung informed Jungkook while he began clearing a few sheets of fabric off a stand-alone table with a sewing machine next to it. Jungkook gave you a wry smirk as he shook his head in jest – rolling his eyes before leaning against the table to look at Taehyung directly.

“Of course you did, cousin. I would expect nothing less –“

“Nothing less than the best! I know dear, I know!” Taehyung clapped back before turning to you and smiling – his stare intense and unwavering that made you feel like a hot spotlight had just been placed above your head.

“Now my beautiful flower, Jimin and I have your dress ready and waiting for you. But!” he paused, holding his hand out for you to place yours in his, “We must do something with your hair and make-up first. If you would be so kind as to accompany me to the back, there’s a make-up artist and a hair stylist ready and waiting to accentuate the natural beauty you already possess~”

You widened your eyes in amusement, smiling back and forth between the two men – feeling a little like a huge celebrity who was getting ready to go to an awards show.

“Okay! Oh, by the way – where is Jimin? I haven’t seen him yet” you asked rather excitedly as you panned your eyes around the room in search of him.

“Oh~ Jimin is probably adorning himself with some finishing touches to his own outfit – don’t worry my love! When I come to dress you, he’ll be close by to help me arrange it on you” Taehyung replied very matter-of-factly.

“...when you come to dress her?” Jungkook piped up rather cynically – folding his arms across his body as Taehyung began leading you through the grand, oak door to the back area. Taehyung chuckled impishly as he turned around, looking over your shoulder and offering Jungkook a serious, yet playful professional expression.

“Why yes! One simply cannot just put my creation on her body – not even herself. It needs a master’s touch, Jungkook. I am the only one who can achieve that~ don’t you agree?” Taehyung winked at you as you found yourself blushing in turn – somewhat loving the fact that Jungkook was letting a hint of jealousy seep through at the thought of another man seeing or touching you in such a way.

“Oh don’t be so green with envy Jungkook; it’s not a good look on you! (Y/N) is an absolute rare beauty but – I’m afraid she lacks the anatomy that makes me –“

“Alright! Fine – enough...” Jungkook cut Taehyung off before any more words could be said as you held back fits of laughter. You couldn’t stop yourself from thinking just how cute Jungkook was in that moment. Even though Taehyung was about as straight as a round-about, Jungkook still felt rather possessive of you. You always thought that jealous and protective boyfriends seemed somewhat troubling and problematic. But now that you were actually in such a situation, you found yourself feeling more or less smug and happy at the fact Jungkook wanted you all to himself; and no one else.

“I’ll just drop you off with the hair and make-up artists – and after they have finished, I will come to help you, okay?” Taehyung led you through the oak door, continuing his friendly chit-chat with you as Jungkook listened to the sound of your fading voices from behind it. Jungkook shook his head, almost laughing to himself as he backed up and took a seat on one of the plush, antique style chairs in the middle of the boutique. “I guess I am jealous...how did you make me this way, (Y/N)?” he produced a full toothed smile in disbelief of his own feelings. A few moments of silence later, Jungkook heard footsteps approaching the same door, before Taehyung stepped through. This time, Jimin was with him – dressed rather similarly to Taehyung, only smaller details such as having no braces and instead, wearing a black, lace-velvet bow-tie in his ensemble. Jungkook stood up to greet Jimin – both Vampires bowing their heads to each other, with Jimin bowing slightly lower out of respect for the Prince.

“It’s good to see you again, Jimin. Have you been well?” Jungkook asked in reference to Jimin being a new Vampire – natum lamia.

“My Lord” Jimin bowed his head again – his blonde locks cascading over his face that produced attractive, contouring shadows on his cheekbones. “It’s still a little...difficult to be around humans. But I am trying my best every day.” Jimin’s voice quivered slightly as Taehyung took his hand in his.

“But – you’re doing very well. I’m so proud of you, my love” Taehyung pressed his lips to Jimin’s cheek affectionately – leaving Jungkook feeling warm and mellow on the inside to witness their love for each other in that moment.

“You should be proud of yourself too, Jimin. It’s not easy to do what you’re doing. And...you have my respect and admiration.” Jungkook offered a gentle smile to the natum lamia – Jimin almost not believing his own hearing as he just received the biggest compliment from none other than the Prince of Vampires himself. Jungkook noticed that since the last time he saw Jimin, he did look a little better in terms of the pigment of his skin and the dark, red circles under his eyes. Natum lamia – in the first few weeks of being bitten; often appeared to look slightly grey in terms of their skin tone. This was simply due to the body adjusting to being dependent on blood and essentially, neither being dead or alive. Jungkook often thought it quite comical that humans always assumed that Vampires were deathly white with pale, porcelain complexions; but they couldn’t have been further from the truth. Vampires – just like humans, came in every single shade and skin tone. Of course, paler Vampires did exist; but there were plenty of Vampires - even pure, royal Vampires, who were beautifully rich in melanin; completely contradicting all previous Vampire lore that humans had created for themselves.

“Oh my – how soft we’ve become with our words, Jungkook” Taehyung turned to his younger cousin – beaming a smile that matched the afternoon sun, before he and Jimin decided to sit opposite Jungkook on the lavish sofa.

“Taehyung – enough” Jungkook spoke up sharply. “We...we have to talk. I have something...very important to tell you.”

Taehyung ceased his teasing as he crossed his left leg over his right and leaned forward slightly to look Jungkook in his eyes. “As do I – baby cousin. Please; you first~”

Slowly but surely, Jungkook managed to relay the entire story of how it was actually your parents that Taehyung’s older brother – Yoongi, had murdered in cold blood, thirteen years ago. He didn’t spare any of the details you had offered him – telling Taehyung of how the autopsy report had been altered by his parents, how your brother had been sent away, and how you ultimately thought that some crazy human killed your parents while living out their fantasy of wanting to be a Vampire. As Jungkook continued to speak, Taehyung sat with pensive eyes and a quiet mind – taking in everything that Jungkook was saying and analysing every single word; while Jimin sat completely silent with his eyes on the floor. Jimin had often wondered about the terrible things that Yoongi had done in the past, since he knew some of it from Taehyung; but he knew it wasn’t his place to question Jungkook at all.

“I was planning on telling her the truth...about me being a Vampire” Jungkook swallowed harshly as he locked eyes with Taehyung. “But – how on earth can I do that now?”

Taehyung filled his lungs slowly, clicking his tongue while he let his thoughts race. “Hmmm” he hummed in a slow, eerie tone. “Yes...yes indeed – that’s...not what I was hoping to hear.” He lowered his eyes to the ground – his heart producing a hammering pain at his new-found knowledge of what his own flesh and blood had caused someone so gentle and caring as you. “Damn you, Yoongi. Damn you to hell” he cursed.

“And – what’s even more concerning; I had to take (Y/N) away from her apartment and keep her in the safety of the Manor without alerting her to the situation” Jungkook’s words were almost chilling as they held Taehyung in their grasp. “Yoongi...appears to have been stalking (Y/N) ever since he escaped. I fear...I fear what his intentions are. At first, I thought he was possibly trying to get to me...but with (Y/N)’s past in mind....” he let his words trail off as Taehyung kept his stare boldly on him.

“You think he’s after her now, too? That he wishes to bestow upon her the same fate as her parents?” Taehyung questioned as he intertwined his fingers rather nervously. Nothing could have ever really intimidated or scared Taehyung; but his elder brother came very close in that respect. He knew what Yoongi was capable of; and to take any of his threats lightly - be you a Vampire or a human, would have been a grave mistake.

“You see – that’s what I don’t understand” Jungkook knitted his eyebrows together as he rested his elbows upon his knees. “Why would he be so hell-bent on finishing this off thirteen years later? Surely – he would try to find her brother too? None of it makes sense Taehyung. I...I don’t know what to do” Jungkook admitted defeat, waving a white flag above his head. He felt almost pathetic that he couldn’t come up with any rhyme or reason for the situation at hand. He felt nothing short of useless - like he was just running around like an incompetent child who was failing to keep you protected. It certainly felt to Jungkook that he - as a Vampiric Prince who possessed illustrious and formidable power, could do nothing to defend someone he held so dearly to his heart.

Taehyung raised his head as he looked to the ceiling – his facial expression one of maddened thought and grief, before he rolled his eyes back in Jungkook’s direction. “My brother – as unrelatable as he is...he never does anything without purpose. If there is one thing that I’ve unwillingly learned from him...is that behind every action; there lies intent. Jungkook; Yoongi is not doing this to ‘finish off what he started’. No...He’s doing this for a greater purpose. I can assure you that.”

“What do you mean? Did you learn something? What was it you had to tell me?” Jungkook almost sat on the edge of his seat – his heart very nearly racing.

“I managed to speak with a few elder Vampires. However, I couldn’t ask too many questions as I didn’t want to raise any suspicions.” Taehyung began – even capturing Jimin’s attention as he raised his head to listen to his lover’s words. “Jungkook...I don’t believe that Yoongi wants to end (Y/N)’s life per say. I believe...he may want her for another purpose.”

“Purpose? Taehyung I swear, if you don’t stop beating around the bush...” Jungkook warned him – flashing a look of unparalleled ferocity to his cousin.

“The elder Vampires wouldn’t tell me much – but they seemed to hint at the possibility of a human, who possessed a touch like (Y/N) – to be exponentially powerful...when used a certain way. Jungkook, if my suspicions are correct; I believe that Yoongi knows of (Y/N)’s gift. I believe that’s why he’s been so adamant on finding her and taking her for himself. However...I don’t think he planned on having you in the mix. I think you may have possibly...ruined his plan ever so slightly.”

Jungkook gave a perplexed look – passing glances between Taehyung and Jimin. “What do you mean?”

“Isn’t it obvious? Jungkook – you have bedded this creature. You have developed real feelings for (Y/N) and – excuse my language, but you’re the damn Prince of the Eternal Kingdom. Yoongi knows that he wouldn’t be able to go up against you alone. This is why I believe it has taken him so long since he escaped to make a move on her. He probably has friends who are willing to help him. Which leads me to believe that he’s anxious...and when Yoongi is anxious...” Taehyung let his sentence die, before Jungkook picked it up for him.

“When he’s anxious...he’s uncontrollable.”

“Like a nuclear bomb..” Taehyung whispered – the thoughts of what Yoongi might possibly wish to use you for instilling great fear inside him. “Look – there’s not much we can do for now. All we can do is keep her safe. Yoongi wouldn’t dare come to the ball tonight anyway – not with your mother and father there at least. He’s not that stupid, surely.”

“I’m going to tell (Y/N) the truth. Tomorrow, after the ball. She needs to know...I can’t be selfish like this any more.” Jungkook felt almost overwhelmed with doubt and sickness inside of him at the thought of your feelings towards him growing to fear and loathing; in place of love and affection. In the midst of his brooding, Jungkook didn’t even notice that Jimin had raised his head fully to look at him dead in his face – his features soft and almost understanding.

“My Lord – if I may speak for a moment...”

Jungkook looked to Taehyung, before both Vampires averted their gaze to the natum lamia.

“You may” Jungkook replied in a curious tone.

“It might be useless for me to offer my opinion...but as someone who fell in love with a Vampire...as someone who used to be human with a natural beating heart – I think I can understand how (Y/N) might feel when you tell her. She might be scared of you...she may even tell you that she doesn’t believe you and that she doesn’t want anything to do with you – especially with her past involving Vampires in mind. But...if she’s anything like how I am with Taehyung...she won’t be able to deny herself from you for long. I don’t know whether it’s because of my current condition with my bloodthirst, but there’s warmness to (Y/N) that’s even rare among humans. She –“

“Taehyung! (Y/N)’s hair and make-up is done. We’re ready for you now!” the make-up artist, Arjana – popped her head around the door, cutting Jimin’s speech short.

“Thank you Arjana, I’ll be right with you~” Taehyung forced a believable, gleaming smile on his face to the female Vampire. “Gentlemen, we shall continue this conversation later. We don’t have the time to discuss it right now. Jungkook – your suit is hung up in that glass closet over there, please go and put it on. Jimin, you and I have a masterpiece to finish.” Taehyung clapped his hands together as he stood up before extending his arm to Jimin to link up with him.

“I shall be back shortly with your precious jewel~ don’t dwell on our conversation, little cousin. Tonight is a night to be enjoyed with her” he placed his free hand on Jungkook’s shoulder as a means to offer some sort of comfort to him. Jungkook nodded quickly in response – feeling overwhelmed with nervous and damning thoughts.

“I won’t let Yoongi use her for whatever perverse plan he has schemed...

...I’ll stop him dead in his tracks; even if it takes my very last breath to do so.”

[theconservativebrief]

It is a very spooky time. In the lead up to Halloween, food brands are racing to capture the ghostly spirit of the holiday in edible form. M&M’s, for example, returned once again with a white chocolate candy corn M&M. Burger King, a longtime leader in the Halloween burger space, keeps unveiling different spooky buns.

There is just one problem: Halloween is not a flavor. A flavor implies uniformity. A flavor is consistent across use-cases. You can have vanilla ice cream or vanilla cake or vanilla creamer in your coffee, and there is a consistent thread, which is vanilla. But while Halloween inspires many different brands to attempt to capture its essence, no one can quite agree what that essence tastes like.

At select Starbucks stores, you can now order something called “Witch’s Brew,” which is a Frappucino, but much spookier. The press release explains:

The charming concoction starts with a purple blend of “toad’s breath” and orange crème Frappuccino and a swirl of green “bat warts” (made with chia seeds). A topping of vanilla whipped cream and dusting of green “lizard scale” powder finishes the beverage.

In the interest of experiential journalism, I paid $5.72 for a “brew” of my own.

“I’ve never rung one of these up before!” the barista told me when I ordered. This makes sense, because they are not very good, though they are, as promised, very purple.

“I feel like I don’t usually eat things this color,” a colleague said when I brought it back to the office. “Because I imagine they’d taste like this.”

Eye of newt, toe of frog. Rachel Sugar/Vox

Witch’s Brew is very, very sweet, like melted lifesavers would be sweet, were you to drink them, which you would not. The “bat wart” chia seeds are certainly an innovation, much like the Microsoft Zune was an innovation. The whipped cream was fine.

This is not Starbuck’s first entry into the Halloween frappucino category, of course. Let us never forget the Frappula Frappucino (2015, 2016) and the Zombie Frappuccino (2017).

The former, a vampire-inspired beverage — Frappula like Dracula, see?— was a blended mocha sauce-milk-ice combo, topped with a “drizzle of strawberry puree,” which looks like blood, in that blood is also red. The net effect was meant to evoke classic horror, but also had the advantage of looking like a sundae, which is to say: a much-loved food with a long history of already existing.

It was not until the Zombie Frappucino of 2017 that we were ushered into the age of the truly vile. Described by Starbucks PR as “a little ghastly,” the Zombie base was “infused with flavors of tart apple and caramel.” Like both tart apples and zombies, it was green, and topped with pink whipped cream. This is because pink is the color of brains.

Starbucks, of course, is not the only brand out for thrills. This year, Burger King had not one but two heavily publicized spooky offerings: a “Scary Black Cherry” slushy, and a “Nightmare King” burger, so-called because the unsettling green bun was “clinically proven” to induce nightmares.

At least two breweries are offering a candy corn-flavored beer. “It tastes a little marshmallow-y,” Deb Lock, co-owner at Urban Growler Brewing Company in St. Paul told the Minneapolis Star-Tribune. “It tastes way better in beer than it does on its own.” At Applebee’s, the dollar-cocktail of the month is a $1 “rum drink” with a “gummy brain for garnish.” It is tropical-fruit flavored, but also electric blue.

Based on all of these purportedly Halloween-themed products, the flavor of the holiday is: orange crème with chia seeds; tart apple and caramel; the color green; candy corn; “scary black cherry”; tropical fruit; the color blue. Which is to say: it does not have one.

This is partly owing to the fact that the “taste” of Halloween is the taste of candy. All candy. Excess candy. Chocolate candy, and nougat-based candy, and lollipops and discs of compressed colored sugar. Some of the candy is stuffed with peanut butter. Some of it is stuffed with flakes of coconut. Some of it has been in someone’s basement since 1993. The unifying theme is: sugar, in excess. But sugar, in excess, can taste like many things.

Other occasions taste like one thing, or maybe two. Three at most. Pumpkin spice, for better or worse, is autumnal; Christmas, or the more inclusive “Holidays” (which is Christmas), is peppermint and ginger. Peppermint is a flavor. Ginger is a flavor. We have, in America, decided that these flavors are associated with certain times of year, during which you can experience them in myriad ways, including, but not limited to, drinks at Starbucks.

Halloween, though, is an aesthetic. And it is not an aesthetic that particularly lends itself to food. The theme of Halloween is “spooky,” “unsettling,” “supernatural,” and “associated with the dead,” none of which necessarily suggest inherent cravability. Who among us has a hankering for a latte with just a little hint of the undead?

So we are stuck with colors: green and blue and purple and black, all meant to evoke otherworldly rot, but without actually being rotten. Even candy corn is not a flavor; candy corn is a food. It is a controversial food, but it exists, in discrete, caloric kernels.

The result is a weird menagerie of food objects that taste like one thing (fruit, usually) but look, in most cases, like an unnatural experiment in food science. If they invoke pleasure, it is in most cases visual, not gustatory. The main story to emerge from Burger King’s scary cherry offering is that it turns one’s excrement exciting colors. (Is this pleasure? I cannot tell you.) The delight is not in eating the object, but in the fact that it exists.

I am not here to rob anyone of that joy. There is very little joy in the world; if a Nightmare King brings anyone joy, may they have several. Halloween stunt foods are something to look forward to, a momentary flicker of delight breaking up the relentless monotony of the forward march of time. And that is fine. Perhaps that is even a public service; perhaps it is a corporate gift, to dull the pain of our collective existence. I don’t want to take that away from any of us.

But Halloween is not a flavor.

Original Source -> Spooky food doesn’t taste good

via The Conservative Brief