Was inspired by @sheepskeleton‘s lovely fanart so I cosplayed their Armand! Their art is gorgeous and they are super nice! And a thank you to my two roommates for running around campus at 1 a.m!
OMG GUYS LOOK AT THIS, I’m screaming :O ❤
thank you for bringing my drawing ot life <33 I feel like some modern Pygmalion, it’s soooo cool 😀
^I love it when fanworks inspire other fanworks ❤ And @sheepskeleton informed me that her fanart was based on this RP thread between @damnitarmand and @vagabonddaniel <333
“People are afraid of themselves, of their own reality; their feelings most of all. People talk about how great love is, but that’s bullshit. Love hurts. Feelings are disturbing. People are taught that pain is evil and dangerous. How can they deal with love if they’re afraid to feel? Pain is meant to wake us up. People try to hide their pain. But they’re wrong. Pain is something to carry, like a radio. You feel your strength in the experience of pain. It’s all in how you carry it. That’s what matters. Pain is a feeling. Your feelings are a part of you. Your own reality. If you feel ashamed of them, and hide them, you’re letting society destroy your reality. You should stand up for your right to feel your pain.”
Sick meaning: the flu, viruses (like HIV), and cancer? From my understanding, no, Ricean vampires are not susceptible to these kinds of diseases. In Only Lovers Left Alive, those vampires have arrangements w/ mortal agents to get clean blood rather than risk taking victims, whose blood could be tainted w/ modern disease or drugs, which OLLA vampires are vulnerable to (but they don’t go into much detail about it). I can’t think of any other vampire media that even touches on the issue of blood diseases and/or other physical illnesses.
@anton-mordrid makes an excellent point here [X]: #1 how the fuck can you not associate HIV/AIDS with vampires, you personally literally made it a blood disease transmitted by explicitly sexual acts between your gay male protagonists.
I’m not educated enough to go any further on this issue, but if you want more on this, go to @vraik and @anton-mordrid.
Sick meaning: physically repulsed to the point of having a visceral reaction? Yes.
In TVL, Lestat tosses his cookies (ok he vomits some blood, no cookies tossed) at the sight of a pile of dead bodies the night he’s turned. (He also hurls as he’s escorted down to the Children of Darkness meeting).
“In a deep prison cell lay a heap of corpses in all states of decay, the bones and rotted flesh crawling with worms and insects. Rats ran from the light of the torch, brushing past my legs as they made for the stairs. And my nausea became a knot in my throat. The stench suffocated me.
He also says that vampires can’t stand to be around the dead bodies of their kills, either:
Revulsion at the sight or smell of death seemed part of my nature. I couldn’t watch executions any more than when I was that trembling boy from the Auvergne, and corpses made me cover my face. I think I was offended by death unless I was the cause of it! And I had to get clean away from my dead victims almost immediately.
Dead blood is not poisonous to them, just distasteful. In TVL, Lestat goes to Armand in Paris for help after Claudia and Louis try to assassinate him a second time, and Armand throws him in a locked cell with a dead mortal for dinner: “Sometime in the dark, I discovered a mortal victim there. But the victim was dead. Cold blood, nauseating blood. The worst kind of feeding, lying on that clammy corpse, sucking up what was left.”
^So clearly dead blood is not bad in the sense of being poisonous, just icky 😛
Louis may never “get it” with fashion, but I’ll be damned if I’ll be seen in public with him when he’s dressed like the equivalent of mouldy American white bread when I am a divine Parisian croissant.
I always used to roll my eyes at people stanning villains and falling in love with them and saying “they’re just misunderstood! they just need love!”
but then guillermo del toro gave me Lucille Sharpe from Crimson Peak, whose name means light but who was locked away in darkness for so long that she was twisted into a monster
who suffered horrendous abuse as a child and as a teenager, caged at home and then in an institution where she was further neglected and assaulted
who clung obsessively to the only source of love she ever knew, her one comfort, which she ended up hurting, confining and killing in her selfish, yet understandable, need to keep it close
who is constantly stitched into rigid and painful clothing
who could not escape her demons, even in death
whom jessica chastain described as being like an abused animal that desperately wants to be touched and loved, but which will bite the instant it is touched
who has committed horrendous, unforgivable crimes, but who is still, at her core, an abused child
who might have been good, once, but who underwent a terrible metamorphosis and hatched out of her cocoon as a carnivorous black moth instead of a butterfly
who will, for eternity, remain that monster, because there is no undoing such a transformation fed by pain, misery and mistreatment
and I went
fuck
anyway good job on the sympathetic villain guillermo she wrecks me every time and I just want to hold her and love her and write meta and 1000 crappy redemption fics for her I hope you’re happy
This is accurate, but it isn’t just anons. It’s virtually everyone to some degree.
I don’t mean offense by that. Most of the time, people just want to help. Or they’re excited. I even do it to other girls myself sometimes. We give unsolicited advice, suggestions, “you should”s and so on.
We try to control, even in the most well meaning way, what women do with their talents. We want to have a say in a woman’s behavior.
It’s a cynical way to think, but in my experience, it’s not a big step all to go from “You should try this” to “I was just trying to help” to “Wow you’re a bitch for not letting me control you.” It’s breathtaking to me sometimes how quickly and willingly people turn on you this way because of the expectation that you exist for them rather than for yourself. And it’s a very strong expectation, one you probably don’t think you have.
But it’s there when people tell me to turn off anons or say nasty things because I’m not dealing with hate the way they want me to. It’s there when people tell me who I should draw. It’s there when people say, under their breath, “I wish she wouldn’t copy photos.” “I wish you would behave according to me.”
And we’re not shy about it, especially when we think we’re being helpful. The need to rescue (and the expectation that women need to be rescued, even if from no one else but their own inherent bad judgment or “sin”) is deeply ingrained in our society. It’s in our laws, our religion, our commerce.
Think about all the ways, even the ways you believe to be harmless or helpful or barely there, that you feel you’re allowed, entitled, or even expected to take personal sovereignty from a woman. ❤
THE DELICATE DEPENDENCY (1982) has long been regarded as one of the best vampire novels ever written, but until now readers have been forced to pay huge sums for dilapidated old paperback copies. It was the first, and best, novel by Michael Talbot (1953-1994), a brilliant gay author more famous for a nonfiction book, The Holographic Universe, which examines the idea that the entire universe is a holographic projection. How good is it? It has 21 five-star reviews on Amazon and a whopping 4.34 average on Goodreads! Features a new foreword by Jillian Venters, author of Gothic Charm School: An Essential Guide for Goths and Those Who Love Them
Included in Fangoria’s Top 10 Books That Suck list. The best vampire novels ever written.
“The past half-decade has seen a glut of vampire novels, but few as ambitious and seriously intended as this one … an impressive book, unflaggingly interesting.” – Publishers Weekly
“The tension builds page by page to a stunning climax … I doubt that I will ever forget it.” – Whitley Strieber, author of The Hunger and The Wolfen
“[O]ne of the most impressive explorations of a vampire mind ever written … a novel of considerable suspense … compelling and deeply original.” – Darrell Schweitzer, Encyclopedia of the Vampire
I could fill novels with fashion advice! You’ll have to be more specific, ma petite. Depends on the occasion. Comfort first, clean, crisp, a dash of structure. Some metal. Other flair if you have the guts for it. Leopard print can count as a neutral now, who would’ve ever thought?!
[^X by @garama] Louis may never “get it” with fashion, but I’ll be damned if I’ll be seen in public with him when he’s dressed like the equivalent of mouldy American white bread when I am a divine Parisian croissant.
And don’t forget the importance of accessories, so much the better if they’re functional, too *winks*
I-want-my-IWTV 