#with other untranslatable puns that made the joke a bit too long

[oathtorn]

// Minthara's "it was a beautiful webbing" pun is translated in spanish as "it was a beautiful wedding [...] the spouses [...] had hundreds of eyes on them"

[hanzajesthanza]

watching the new season of what we do in the shadows (which also likes to play with tropes) and thinking about how fond i am of the fact that vampires in the witcher are so much less… structured

certainly, they have some tradition, ritual, even some “absolutely unacceptable things, the kind of things no vampire does” — but even these offhanded mentions are presented in the context of being humorous, like:

“i flew under the influence” being a darkly humorous play on “to drive under the influence.” or “my multimembered name is authentic. and in keeping with vampire tradition” … it makes you smirk and raise an eyebrow, like… and what tradition would that be?! and may i also mention that we know nothing of vampire language except for the untranslatable pun of regis’ mule draakul, as a throwaway dracula joke.

meanwhile, the rules and procedures present in what we do in the shadows are what typically drives the drama and conflict in the plot, as opposed to the comedy…. the comedy comes from the characters defying all expectations of their society, not the idea of the society itself.

and i think the things what we do in the shadows plays with are generally accepted as vampire tropes. they have a kind of undead, reverse-society: a strict heirarchy determined by councils, bloodlines, tracking honor and shame and who-bit-who and all of these intensely complex games.

vampires in the witcher, though?

“During my youth I enjoyed… er… the pleasures of good company (…) With humans, however, there exists a system of rules and restrictions: parental authority, guardians, superiors and elders–morals, ultimately. We have nothing like that. Youngsters have complete freedom and exploit it. They create their own patterns of behaviour. Stupid ones, you understand (…)”

they compose an entirely lawless, authorityless society—you could not even call it a society—an asociety. no organization, no heirarchy, no councils, bureaucracy, not even patterns of behavior to follow. no one to look up to, and no one to look down upon.

social approval, rather, comes in the form of peer pressure and the kind of stupid nonsense that can only come from friend groups:

“I didn’t want to spoil the party, and the thought of losing social approval terrified me. So I partied.”

social activities are parties, but not vampire parties as they’re commonly understood. they do not throw lavish balls full of sensual masquerades, garish horror, blood spills from fountains and fills goblets in a parody of aristocracy…

no, the vampires in the witcher? their parties are merely a few guys (and girls) getting wasted in some peasant village:

“Revelries and frolics, shindigs and booze-ups; every full moon we’d fly to a village and drink from anyone we found. The foulest, the worst class of… er… fluid. It made no difference to us whose it was, as long as there was… er… haemoglobin… It can’t be a party without blood, after all! And I was terribly shy with vampire girls, too, until I’d had a drop.”

organize a ball? they couldn’t organize a bingo night!

yes, they are indeed social, but society: the working together to help each other, or even the darker side of one controlling and commanding another, is an entirely alien concept to them. like the men of the golden age, they seem to live carelessly, like the cyclopes, they seem to live lawlessly.

councils, rules, codeces, instruction manuals… what is this? not part of their culture. they have no need for food, they are affected not by cold or heat, and they can fly with every full moon. they have no fight for survival, only petty squabbles and drama. no old, no young. no father, no son. no superiors, no inferiors.

ageless libation, celebration, socializing to no end. an ever-tipsy nothingness.

in short… life in a dream.