#if only because it actually has the protagonist get to BE a vampire by the end

[athina-blaine]

if anyone's wondering why i describe laios' eyes as "amber" in my fics it's because during proof reading i'd read "gold eyes" and keep jumpscaring myself picturing robert pattinson's glossed up contacts in the twilight movies, may the cringe courts have mercy on me for this act of self-preservation

#dungeon meshi #i trust yall to tell me if it's cringe anyway lol #i think laios would like twilight tbh #if only because it actually has the protagonist get to BE a vampire by the end #although he would absolutely find edward super boring and be team jacob #ive already shared my thoughts on edward/bella being labru coded but just to reiterate #kabru would 100% find edward painfully relatable for having this singular person be completely unreadable to them #someone other than me will have to write the au tho 😔

[cy-cyborg]

The Untrustworthy Fake: Disability Tropes

[ID: A screenshot of Willy Wonka from Charlie and the Chocolate Factory as he limps towards a crowd using a cane. In the picture, he has a brown top hat in his hand, and he's wearing a suit with a purple jacket, multicoloured bow tie and cream coloured pants. Beside him is text that reads: "Disability Tropes, The untrustworthy Fake" /End ID]

Tell me if this sounds familiar: A new character is introduced into a story with some kind of disability - usually visible but not always. Maybe they're a seemingly harmless person in a wheelchair, maybe they're a one-legged beggar on the street, or maybe they're an elderly person with a cane and a slow, heavy limp. But at some point, it's revealed it's all a ruse! The old man with a cane "falls" forward and does a flawless summersault before energetically springing back up to his feet, the wheelchair user gets to their feet as soon as they think the other character's backs are turned, the one legged beggar's crutch is knocked out of his hand, only to have his other leg pop out of his loose-fitting tunic to catch him.

All of these are real examples. Maya and The Three introduces one of it's main protagonists, Ricco, by having him pretend to be missing a leg in order to con people (something that works on the protagonist, at least at first), Buffy The Vampire Slayer had the character Spike, pretend to be in a wheelchair, until the other characters leave and he gets up, revealing it's all a ruse and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory introduces Wonka by having him slowly limp out into the courtyard of the factory, only for his cane to get stuck, causing him to "fall" and jump back up, revealing that he's actually perfectly fine. Virtually every single major crime show in the past few decades has used this trope too, from CSI to The Mentalist, Castle, Law and Order and Monk all having at least one episode featuring it in some way. Even the kids media I grew up with isn't free from it; The Suite Life of Zack & Cody sees Zach faking being dyslexic after meeting someone who actually has the condition in the episode Smarter and Smarter and the SpongeBob SquarePants episode Krabs vs Plankton has Plankton fake needing a wheelchair (among other injuries) after falling in the Krusty Krab as a ploy to sue Mr Krabs and trick the court into giving him the Kraby Patty Formula.

No matter the genre or target audience though, one thing is consistent: this trope is used as a way to show someone is dishonest and not to be trusted. When the trope is used later in the story, it's often meant to be a big reveal, to shock the audience and make them mad that they've been duped, to show the characters and us what this person (usually a villain) is willing to stoop to. Revealing the ruse early on though is very often used to establish how sleazy or even how dangerous a character is and to tell the audience that they shouldn't trust them from the get go. Gene Wilde (The actor who first played Willy Wonka) even said in several interviews that this was his intent for Wonka's character. He even went so far as to tell the director of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory that he wouldn't do the film without that scene because of how strongly he felt this trope was needed to lay the foundations for Wonka's questionable intentions and motivations. His exact words are: "...but I wouldn't have done the film if they didn't let me come out walking as a cripple and then getting my cane stuck into a cobble stone, doing a forward somersault and then bouncing up... the director said, well what do you want to do that for? and I said because from that point on, no one will know whether I'm telling the truth or lying."

There's... a lot of problems with this trope, but that quote encapsulates one of the biggest ones. whether intentionally or not, this trope ends up framing a lot of actual disabled people as deceitful, dishonest liars. Now I can already hear you all typing, What?! Cy that's ridiculous! No one is saying real disabled people are untrustworthy or lying about their disabilities, just people who are faking!

but the thing is, the things often used in this trope as "evidence" of someone faking a disability are things real disabled people do. A person standing up from their wheelchair or having scuff-marks on their shoes, like in the episode Miss Red  from The Mentalist isn't a sign they're faking, a lot of wheelchair users can stand and even walk! They're called ambulatory wheelchair users, and they might use a wheelchair because they can't walk far, they might not feel safe walking on all terrains, they might have unstable joints that makes standing for too long risky, they might have a heart condition like POTS that has a bigger impact when they stand up or any number of other reasons. Also even non-ambulatory wheelchair users will still have scuff marks from things like transferring and bumping into things (rather hilariously, even TV Tropes calls this episode out as being "BS" in it's listing for this trope, which it refers to as Obfuscating Disability). A blind beggar flinching or getting scared when you pull a gun on them isn't a sign they're faking their blindness like it is in Red Dead Redemption 2. Plenty of blind people can still see a little bit, it might only be a general sense of light and darkness, it might be exceptionally blurry or just the fuzzy outlines of shapes, or they might only be able to see something directly in front of them, all of which might still be enough to cue the person into what's happening in a situation like that. Even if it's not, the sound of you pulling your gun out or other people nearby freaking out and making noise probably would tip them off. A person needing a cane or similar mobility aid sometimes, but being able to go without briefly or do even "big movements" like Wonka's rolling somersault, doesn't mean they don't need it at all. Just like with wheelchairs, there's a lot of disabilities that require canes and similar aids some days, and not others. Some disabilities even allow people those big, often straining movements on occasion, or allow them to move without the aid for short periods of time, but not for long. Some people's disability's might even require a mobility aid like a cane as a backup, just in case something goes wrong, but that still means you need to carry it around with you, and unless it can fold down, it's easier to just use it.

Disability is a spectrum, and a lot of disabilities vary in severity and what is required of the people who have them day to day. This trope, however, helps to perpetuate the idea that someone who does any of these things (and many others) is faking, which can actively make the lives of disabled people harder and can even put them in very real danger, physically, mentally and even financially.

Just ask any ambulatory wheelchair user about how many times they've been yelled at for using accommodations they need, like disabled toilets or parking spaces. How many times they've been accused of faking and even filmed without their consent because they stood up in public, even if it was to do something like get their wheelchair unstuck or as simple as them standing to briefly reach something on a high shelf. I've caught multiple people filming me before, so have my friends and family, and it's honestly scary not knowing where those images have ended up. This doesn't just impact the person either, a friend of mine was filmed while standing up to get his daughter (who was about 4 at the time) out of the car. He was lucky to have stumbled across the video a few days later on facebook and contacted the group admins where it was posted to get it taken down, but had he not stumbled across it by chance, pictures with his home address and his car's number plate, his child's face and his face all visible would have just been floating around, all because a woman saw him stand briefly to pick up his daughter.

Many people don't stop at just saying a nasty comment or taking a photo though, a lot of people, when they suspect people are faking, will get violent. I have many friends who have been pushed, slapped in the face, spat on or had their mobility devices kicked out from under them. I've even been in a few situations myself where, had I not had people with me, I think the situation would have turned violent.

There's even been cases where those photos and videos I've mentioned before have been used against real disabled people and they've been reported to their country's welfare system as committing disability fraud. While cases like this are usually resolved *relatively* quickly, in many parts of the world, their payment will be halted while the investigation is in process, meaning they may be without any income at all because of someone else's ignorance. If you're already struggling to make ends meet (which, if you're only living off one of those payments, you probably will be), a few weeks without pay can mean the difference between having a home and being on the streets.

Not to mention that when there's so many stories about people faking a disability in the media, especially when the character is doing it to get some kind of "advantage", such as getting accommodations or some kind of disability benefit, it perpetuates the idea that people are rorting the systems put in place to help disabled people. If this idea becomes prevalent enough, the people in charge start making it harder for the people who need them to access those systems, which more often than not results in disabled people not even being able to access the very systems that are supposed to be helping them. A very, very common example of this is in education where accommodations for things like learning disabilities require you to jump through a ridiculous number of hoops, especially at higher levels, only to have some teachers and professors refuse to adhere to the adaptations anyway because they're convinced the student (and usually disabled students as a whole) is faking.

Yes, the "untrustworthy faker" is a fictional trope, and yes, it does occasionally happen in real life, but not as often as media (including things like news outlets) would have you believe. However, when the media we consume is priming people to look for signs that a disabled person is faking, it has a real impact on real disabled people's lives. "Fake-claiming" is a massive problem for people in pretty much all parts of the disabled community, and it ranges from being just annoying (e.g. such as people spamming and fake-claiming blind people online with "if you were really blind, how do you see the screen" comments) to the more serious cases I mentioned above. It's for this reason a lot of folks in the disabled community ask that people leave this trope out of their works.

#Writing disability with Cy Cyborg #Long Post #Disability #Disabled #Disability Representation #Writing Disability #Writing #Writeblr #Authors #Creators #Writing Advice #Disabled Characters #On Writing #Disability in Media #Tropes #Disability Tropes #faking disability trope

[toaster-trash]

It’s always so interesting to me how so many people tend to look at protagonists’ reactions in 19th century gothic media and immediately slap a label on them as “over-dramatic” or “weak”, when in reality I don’t think we (as a society) know what we’re talking about. I think our society is collectively desensitised to concepts, and what I mean by that is that the concept of a story like Dracula or Frankenstein isn’t something that we’d ever bat an eye at because it’s been so ingrained into our very understanding or the concept of basic modern horror premises that we no longer appreciate it for what it is, and I’ve been guilty of it too. So a lot of people take the protagonists reactions to their circumstances, and paint it as melodrama or even worse, get high and mighty and claim that if THEY were in that scenario, they would NEVER do something so stupid, right?

But I need you to take a minute to actually think about the positions these characters are in. We’ve become so desensitised to these concepts, but if we were actually in those positions in real life we would probably not be able to handle them half as well as some of these characters. For example, Dracula. Sure, guy goes to stay in spooky castle, client turns out to be a vampire, pretty standard, easy to point at Jonathan Harker’s decisions and blame him. Oh Jonathan, don’t you know walking through an abandoned castle when your client tells you not to is bound to get you hurt? Don’t you know going to a remote area with villagers crossing themselves every five seconds is dangerous?

But actually think about this. You’re a solicitor, you have a fiancée back home and you need this job. You meet your client, he’s a little creepy, you feel unsafe, but you need this job. What are you going to do, turn back and tell your employer you couldn’t do it because the vibes were off? Obviously not. You suck it up. Then slowly, your world starts collapsing around you and slowly getting smaller as you find yourself trapped inside this man’s house and you slowly come to the realisation that you are being held captive in the house of a creepy old man who has access to all the rooms in the house, including your own, and can enter it at any time, in a secluded area far away from everyone, and with no hope of reaching out for help. He has the power to do anything to you, and you’re completely helpless, and does. You are going to die there and none of your loved ones will ever know what happened to you. Your abuser might even fabricate your identity or conduct a lie to ruin all memory of you forever. Then things get worse, and you realise that your abuser and captor isn’t even human. Throw in the infanticide and assault scenes, and that is a horrifying scenario, and I don’t think some people fully recognise that when they read it.

The very same with Frankenstein, oh haha, Victor gets ill often, look at him fainting every five minutes, what a whiny bitchboy, right? But Jesus Christ, again, think about this scenario that he’s in properly. My guy digs up corpses, brings them to his dorm room and stitches them together, only for him to bring said corpses to life and watch his inanimate amalgamation of dead bodies come to life in your house. Now again, imagine cutting up corpses and sewing them together. If you can’t manage that, imagine a friend of yours came to you and told you that they’d been stealing corpses, cutting them up, and sewing them together, and they now have an 8ft tall giant amalgamation or corpses in their room. Now imagine going to their house and seeing that amalgamation of corpses. Good luck not passing out and vomiting all over their bedroom floor, and extra good luck not needing extreme psychiatric care afterwards. Again, corpses. I’m willing to bet half the people here have never even seen a corpse, and this isn’t even freshly-dead-grandma-in-the-coffin, these are decomposing and rotting corpses of real human beings. Observed. And some corpses cut up. And pieced together. Into a giant corpse. Genitalia included. Intestines included. Everything else included. And then that corpse then starts killing everyone you’ve ever loved and you have the added guilt that it IS it’s own person and you’ve abandoned it.

Which of course, could lead me into a whole separate rant, on how I believe that Victor’s flaw doesn’t lie in his horror at his own actions, and his fainting and illness and whatnot, but rather at his deliberate avoidance of the consequences of those actions – (horrifying as they may have been to come to terms with, his avoidance ultimately led to the mental distress and death of tons of completely innocent people, and his avoidance, however difficult, was still very much wrong and Victor is still very much to blame for it) – as well as the mania and obsessive justification he kept using to reach that goal. Although again, it could be argued there was avoidance in that as well – Victor pasting clinical lenses over all his actions, ignoring his family and friends, which ultimately all caught up with him. It’s my reading that Victor isn’t to blame whatsoever because he’s “over dramatic” or that “whiny”, he has every right to be severely traumatised by his experiences, however much his own fault they may be, he is to blame because at every turn where he could have faced his actions and confided in a friend or likewise, he did not, and it led to the deaths of everyone he loved. Except for Ernest, who likely then had to live with the death of his entire family.

But that’s a side rant – my primary point is, I genuinely do not remotely believe that authors in the past were really any more “emotional” or “melodramatic” than we are today. The only difference is that because the premise of these plots have been so deeply engrained into our society, we do not understand how horrifyingly traumatising these situations are by nature and dismiss them out of hand. Dracula did not exist yet when Dracula was being written. Frankenstein did not exist yet when Frankenstein was being written. Don’t come looking to read old gothic literature expecting a camp B-list horror film, and then call the characters over-dramatic when they react like average actual human beings to absolutely horrific scenarios.

And what’s more with regard to general more open affection between friends in older books, no it isn’t unrealistic, we’re all just cynical assholes now. (There’s a limit, obviously. Some characters are just raging homosexuals and there’s no other explanation. “His form so divinely wrought and beaming with beauty” my ass alright now just admit you had gay sex and be done with it)

#gothic lit #classic literature #gothic literature #goth lit #classic lit #frankenstein #frankenstein weekly #dracula #dracula daily #frankenstein or the modern prometheus #re:dracula #re: dracula #victor frankenstein #Jonathan Harker #clervalstein? #clervalstein

[panlight]

Bella wanting to be a vampire and loving it when she becomes one isn't inherently a bad narrative choice. It's just weird compared to the tone with which vampirism is portrayed like, literally up until the second Bella wakes up and is like 'wow this is amazing!'

Everyone else is talking about it in terms of being frozen, of fighting dark instincts, in rising above the hand you've been dealt, of loneliness, of stagnation, of longing for things you can no longer have, of the monotony of eternity. Even characters who have the kind of true forever love that Bella has with Edward talk about it at best as "hell's not so bad if you get to keep an angel with you." They talk about the thirst being painful and never fully satiated. SM talks about how the vegetarian vampire diet is almost as hard as starvation would be for a human, and that animal blood only dulls the pain, never really makes it go away (granted this was on the Lexicon not in the actual text. She may have changed her mind at some point, IDK).

So with all of the above, Bella's insistence that this is what she wants, not just because it's the only way to be with Edward but because of the "perks" and how she "wants to be Superman, too" seem like a weird choice. She's hearing from actual vampires that being a vampire kind of sucks, and she's like 'la la la la I'm not listening' and then she's . . . right, somehow?

It's like SM wanted to have her cake and eat it, too. She wanted the brooding vampire, the 'good' vampires who struggle and sacrifice and deny their darker nature. She wanted the tragic vampire, forced to exist as a monster but trying not to behave as one. The endless dark midnight. But then she also wanted a Happily Ever Fairytale and power fantasy where her protagonist realizes her full potential as a vampire while also finding a forever family. Edward's vampirism makes him feel like a monster; Bella's makes her feel like a superhero.

And it's just . . . it's just hard to make these two things work together in my head. Their worldviews seem completely and utterly different, and Bella being happy doesn't change the decades--in some cases centuries--of 'suffering tragic vampire' stuff the other vampires have been through.

[angel-maybe-alive]

Old fairytale and Greek myths be like: don't go to the dark forest alone you will be eaten and I will use eaten here because I can't tell little kids what are the actual horrors that can happen to you, don't judge people by their appearance, don't be vain, be nice to people, sometimes your stepmother will try to kill you, marriage is a inevitability, gods are just like anyone with power volatile don't fuck with them, faes ate not your friends, getting revenge on those who hurt you is actually the right thing to do however hurting people for no reason is not a good thing.

The girlboss/feminist/Female rage/ booktok retellings: yeah kidnaping is actually okay if the kidnaper is hot, man can be vain and arrogant if they are hot, actually the only people who shouldn't be vain is other women because women who actually care about their appearances are whores and bitches the opposite of my self insert badass protagonist who is the most beautiful of them all but also acts like she is ugly to be relatable, there are gods that are little baby angels and bitch gods and I will ignore any myth that portray my baby god as evil, speaking of ignoring myths do you like faes because I will butcher faeric myths so much it will make twilight vampires accurate, also there are no hot evil people hot+evil = morally grey, also being gentle, generous or just nice is being weak my protagonist has to be a dick with everyone because this means she is actually cool and badass actually the more a character is a dick the coolest they are, an older woman will still try to kill you but it's not your stepmother anymore just the older ex of the love interest because the author will recognize how abusive is the relationship with a power and age gap only when the victims is a man, also demeter is a cunt

#anti booktok #anti acotar #writing #books #anti lore olympus #anti lo

[blond-jerk-tourney]

Blond Jerk Tourney Semifinals 2

Propaganda from submitters Under Cut

Spike

He is a jerk. He is Spike. Of course he is a jerk. And he is a walking paradox. He was bad, is bad, but got better. No you can't fix him, but you can love him for his efforts.

Nanami Kiryuu

She's the mean girl of the show, and a pretty interesting take on the "bitchy vain school rival of the protagonist" trope. She spends most of her early screentime being a bully and most of her later screentime being both the biggest loser imaginable and deeply sad/troubled (which still does not erase how much of an asshole she can be). She even laughs like your stereotypical mean rich girl. Nanami has so many problems and sucks so so bad. I adore her.

Shes a psychotic bully who seeks to ruin the lives and reputations of any girl who gets more of her brothers attention than she does. Reasons Nanami Kiryuu deserves to win: - she has made many attempts at physical and psychological terrorism against Anthy Himemiya (including a plotted wardrobe malfunction at a crowded social gathering) simply for drawing more of her brother's attention than her - tried to fill Anthy's bedroom with wild animals (a snail, a snake, and a live octopus) to make her out to be a freak only to find that her room was already full of wild animals - she bankrolled an elementary schoolers crush on her to turn him into her personal boyservant - briefly non-personed a member of her bully entourage for sharing an umbrella with her brother - received a luxury cowbell due to a shipping error and smugly wore it to school for weeks flaunting it like high coture - when her bully entourage rebelled against her due to her brothers manipulation she brought them back in line by just straight up beating the shit out of all of them - all in all just a petty, goonish motherfucker (she also does the ohohohohoho anime girl laugh)

she's blond: despite being Japanese her hair is yellow, unlike her brother's. yellow is even her image color. she's a jerk: introduced as a jealous and dishonest scheming bully, she is one of the more outwardly antagonistic characters in a cast where pretty much everyone is a Real Piece Of Work she's the best: the quintessential ohoho-laughing ojou, her fully-realized character arc makes people both laugh and cry even her sidekick is a blond jerk! how many blond jerks have their own blond jerk sidekick?

i don't know what you've heard but she's NOT the kind of girl who lays eggs!

The token mean rich girl of the franchise. Does the classic "ohohoho" laugh. Doesn't like either of our main characters. She never actually seems to get her way, and secretly has a lot of her own problems. also she lays eggs and turns into a cow

Absolutely THE quintessential anime mean girl. I mean literally her laughing is THE meme for the hohohoho anime laugh. Needs attention So Badly and straight up bullies anyone she deems a threat to that (so basically Everyone). I haven’t finished RGU but apparently she duels with the intent to kill and drowned a kitten once because it was taking up too much of her brother’s attention? Also she’s 13 which explains a lot

#bjt semifinals #blond jerk tournament #tournament polls #polls #spike btvs #spike #buffy the vampire slayer #nanami kiryuu #revolutionary girl utena #rgu

[avelera]

So I wrote 7,800 words of an entirely new Dreamling fic yesterday pretty much out of NOWHERE based on a what-if headcanon chat that got ENTIRELY out of hand.

Basically, I’ve always found it weird that Hob is, well, WEIRD for an immortal. And I adore it! There’s basically no other immortals in fiction, or very few, who consistently have a day job, don’t become superheroes of enlightened morality in a couple lifetimes, or otherwise leave normal mortal life behind. Except Hob.

But there’s other weird stuff Hob gets up to in the comics especially. Namely: nothing. He sees a Sea Serpent in Hob’s Leviathan and just sort of… shrugs it off. He supposedly ran into a vampire coven while hanging out with a Constantine and they killed Constantine and kinda left him alone. He seemed otherwise pretty unphased. Between 1689-1889, unless he’s with Dream, very little happens to him. He just seems prosperous in both meetings.

But while Dream is gone, during the Blitz, his wife Peggy dies in his arms. That’s pretty dramatic. That’s main character tragedy.

So what if… Dream subconsciously pigeonholes Hob as not a fellow immortal of increasing antiquity, now over half a millennia old, but… just a guy. Just the guy he met in 1389? That certainly seems to be part of why he reacts so poorly to being called lonely in 1889. He can’t fathom that the human mudpuppy he met in a tavern that was basically a hovel could suddenly have INSIGHT into one such as him. But Hob was over 500 years old at that point! And Dream respects other eldritch creatures like fae and demigods, even if they are younger than him. So what gives that he doesn’t see the 500+ year old immortal human as maybe capable of insight into the life of a fellow eldritch being?

Because Dream doesn’t think of Hob that way.

And Dream IS the human subconscious.

Things get really meta from there because right you’ve got all these Doylist reasons that Hob is Just A Guy who seems allergic to getting involved with any of the grand stories of Sandman except as a bit part. A minor character even in his own story. But since it’s a story about stories, you can make it Watsonian too.

Maybe because Dream doesn’t think HE has a story (he says, in the comic which is ABOUT his story, thus undermining his point with a 4th wall break) and Hob is the only person in his life who is basically a normal friend and not a subject or family member or eldritch colleague… does he mentally pigeonhole Hob as not having a story either but just being witness to other people’s stories, like Jim?

It’s kind of weird isn’t it how in Hob’s Leviathan he spends the whole thing WONDERING what secrets lie beneath the surface of the ocean but when the sea serpent bursts forth he just sort of… shrugs?

It’s a bit weird too, in the show, even though I adore how unexpected the beat is, that after 34 years’ delay, Dream shows up and Hob barely reacts except to quip that he’s late. Though I’m sure Dream was very grateful. 

… so I kinda wanted to do a one-shot about how this is actually an eldritch effect Dream accidentally cast on Hob. He sees Hob as just his normal friend despite being immortal. So Hob is Normal. Aggressively normal. He has a day job despite being 600+ years old. He exhibits none of the typical behavior one would expect out of a man who loves life so much he refused to die. And Dream realizes this when he learns that Hob’s 20th century was INSANE, filled with adventures and high drama and lost love and passion. A century where Hob was the protagonist in his own life story again. And it all abruptly stopped and he went back to having a normal human job the second Dream was free.

Anyway, Dream is gutted by the realization. The rest is them figuring out how the fuck this HAPPENED and if it can be fixed.

#dreamling #Maggie’s writing progress

[clearancecreedwatersurvival]

The spectrum of sports anime runs from Near Realism to Firmly Removed From Reality.

On one end of this spectrum we have Haikyuu!! which wins over every other sports anime in terms of actually being about the sport. Every part of Haikyuu!! is either playing a match or preparing for a match and almost all of their abilities and plays are firmly rooted in reality. Is it perhaps slightly unrealistic that this one short guy can jump That High??? Maybe, but he IS a shounen battle protagonist (haikyuu follows the shounen battle format perfectly Do Not At Me about this I am Right. The battles are matches. Obviously.) and therefore Hinata being Just That Good and Kageyama being Just That Good is necessary for genre reasons.

On the opposite end of the spectrum is something like Birdie Wing, the lesbian golf mafia anime, which I have not seen yet (yet!!! It is on the docket!) but I did watch this video essay about it and I think Geoff Mother’s Basement Thew would agree with my assessment. Which is to say that it’s absolutely batshit off the wall wild and has very little in common with the actual sport of golf. Which is great for me personally, because fuck golf.

Somewhere in between these two extremes lies Sk8 the Infinity which at first seems to maybe have some solid grounding in actual skateboarding and snowboarding technique and jumps even if it is unrealistic that they manage to be mostly fine after high speed crashes with no protective gear, and then fucking Adam shows up and drags the genre towards absurdity until it culminates in a psychic skateboarding battle to the death.

In our universe entering a flow state is something that anyone who is really comfortable with an activity can do, where you are basically embodying the mindfulness principle of One Mind, perfectly aware of everything related to your task and able to act without thinking about it first, in what’s basically a moving meditative state.

In the sk8 universe entering a flow state means getting mentally sucked through a prismatic vortex into a hypnotic paralysis which can be induced by one crazed matador roleplayer pulling you into basically a vampire thrall and can only be broken with the power of love friendship.

#sk8 #sk8 the infinity #haikyuu!! #birdie wing #animanga #sports anime #caitie speaks #I am once again asking people to watch mothers basement videos #have I mentioned how he’s the only way I get anime recommendations #every good show I have watched except for maybe Given??? resulted from a mothers basement recommendation #the thing about haikyuu following battle shounen formula is from his haikyuu video which is the video that convinced me to watch haikyuu!!

[ystrike1]

The Blood Moon - By Ruru (8.5/10)

There's a bloodthirsty cult in the north! All of the wives that get sent up end up dissappearing. Our protagonist is their ideal prey. She's the gorgeous but unwanted daughter of a merchant. She gets sold for a price, never to return. Luckily for her one of the monsters hasn't been initiated yet, and he's willing to betray his family for her.

Linnea is kinda weak. She's the weakest part of this story. Just being honest.

She starts out tough and willing to do what is needed to survive, but then she cries, and then she continues to cry. She cries alot.

Linnea must wed the northern Count Mattei. He's on the old side, but he's a perfect gentleman. She thinks she'll be ok. She's never had a real family. The merchant who took her in was just a distant relative who always planned to marry her off for cash. She's a practical lady. Her husband is an aristocrat. She thinks she's lucky.

Count Mattei introduces Aleksis as his son. There's a pregnant moment at the altar. Aleksis and Linnea both feel attraction right away. Aleksis more than her. He is conflicted about the marriage, and he's too afraid to name his feelings.

Aleksis is kind of a coward for a while, which makes him interesting.

Things get bad for Linnea....slowly.

She wants to hang on. She wants to be a Countess, but he's crazy religious. Count Mattei doesn't want a wife. He seems to want a nun. He won't sleep with her, visit her or touch her. He spends all day in a mysterious temple, conducting sermons on religion that Linnea doesn't really understand.

He even whips her, when her soul isn't deemed pure enough.

Strange stories run through the manor. The Mattei family gets special privileges, because the first head of their family helped establish the country. The legends say the first Mattei was a monster. A man shaped thing that ate blood and killed with his bare hands. He made a deal with the first king. The monster offered the king the throne, in exchange for sanity. The ability to live without constantly lusting for gore. The king agreed, and the king created rituals and objects to seal the monster. The monster retained only a fraction of his power, but he was capable of living without killing. His children are the Mattei family. Basically, all of the Mattei's can become real vampires. They have to use The Blood Seed Ritual to remain reasonably sane and human. Becoming a True Vampire is Not A Good Idea. It's torture. Being a vampire for real is too much power, and you're basically nuts forever.

Linnea is one of many wives. She is a sacrifice. Only "pure" women can be used as Blood Seed Sacrifices. It only takes one. The Mattei family is pretty big. They must sacrifice one woman for every vampire of age, or that child will become a real vampire and commit endless killings.

It's a necessary sacrifice, oh...and most of the Mattei family still enjoys torture and blood. They just don't have the insane thirst. Don't feel bad for them. They're assholes.

Linnea isn't actually a "wife" at all. Aleksis doesn't know that, so he tries to defend her when the maids treat her like trash.

Aleksis doesn't know much, but he was also in denial. He never questioned what happened to the wives until he fell in love with one.

Linnea is his Blood Seed.

He doesn't accept it.

He drinks her blood and he saves her instead.

Aleksis transforms and he kills one of his relatives. The story is not yet complete. A promo was released that reveals alot of spoilers. It is what confirms the yandere element of the story. Aleksis starts out more mousy. Struggling with the idea of stealing his fathers bride.

In the promotional spoilers he is much crueler, and he's constantly desperate for her blood. I'm going to assume she has the role of Blood Seed, but she's alive so he must drink from her or face life as a complete monster. The promo chapters also indicate their relationship is incredibly twisted.

After Aleksis transforms Linnea is his excuse. Every bad thing he does is for her. He loves her. He wants her. He wishes nobody else would look at her. He can no longer rely on his family. He's stronger than them. They're idiots willing to harm Linnea, to keep the status quo.

To be clear the cursed members of the Mattei family are powerful. They are still a threat to him, and especially Linnea, but he has a strength boost due to transforming into a true vampire.

He's a mess. He feels guilty because the Mattei line has killed many women to create Blood Seeds. He is clinging to his love for Linnea. He needs it to feel like a good person.

The promo is incredibly interesting. It implies that Aleksis killed Count Mattei, and he is covering up the murder with Linnea as an accomplice. Linnea is attending balls as the Countess, but Aleksis (her stepson) is the one escorting her. The other nobles are not stupid. They behave like a married couple. There's alot of tension. It's great. Most ballroom scenes are boring, but our protagonists really feel morally grey.

The situation is hard.

The Mattei family has produced alot of the countries strongest Knights. The vampire thing makes them dangerous, but it's likely that the government sees them as a necessary evil. Prominent figures immediately notice the discord in the Mattei family, and the fact that Aleksis has white hair. His hair was originally black.

....the original Mattei founder had white hair...

Uh oh.

Linnea dances with a mysterious blond man who hasn't been introduced properly yet. He's someone who knows most of the vampire secrets. He wants to free Linnea fron the cursed north and all of its vampire drama.

There's also some lines that imply Count Mattei might not actually be dead. He could just be incapacitated in his own home. Aleksis and Linnea could be keeping him alive. We don't know, but Count Mattei is most definitely an enemy. He's a hyper religious maniac who enjoys the Blood Seed tradition.

Linnea cries in the middle of the ballroom, because she wants to be free. The blond man offers her freedom, and she wants it, despite her feelings for Aleksis. Linnea cries wayyyy too much, but I respect her desire to survive. It's clear that she doesn't want to live near the Mattei family.

Aleksis promised to protect her.

What if that means he has to let her go?

She is a commoner woman, after all. Not a noble with a stake in the future of the country. She suffers horribly in the Mattei house, despite Aleksis. He is never strong enough to protect her, no matter what he sacrifices.

Their relationship appears twisted beyond repair, despite their feelings.

It's great, but Linnea has to quit it with the water works. I'd rate this a 9 otherwise, but her character needs to be expanded upon. Aleksis gets lots of development and vampire powers. Linnea feels a little too boring in comparison.

#The Blood Moon #yandere #male yandere #yandere male #yandere boy #recommendations #recs #rec #recommended #monster boy #monsters #supernatural #supernatural romance

[hyperactivewhore]

The characterization of Klaus in his fanfics is just insane.

First of all, this is gonna be bashing to 96% of Klaus’s fanfics lmao. I still love reading them tho.

But straight to the point, why are people writing him as if he would ever allow someone, anyone, to disrespect him the way authors make their ocs do??? No, Klaus wouldn't be giggling and shit if you call him "puppy" or "Santa Klaus", he's literally gonna murder you in the spot and even worse lmao.

I've read so much stories where the protagonist is constantly insulting Klaus and bickering with him (it's funny tho) and he just... allows it. Yes, Klaus, the man who's literally shown to tear off heads whenever someone as much breathes in the wrong way, and yet he allows this teen (because in 99% of fanfics the protagonist is a girl not over nineteen, at least physically) to talk shit about him.

Like I absolutely love those kind of stories, they're good and I'll continue reading them, but the Klaus they write is 100% ooc. And I understand why, because as someone who used to write fanfics of him, his character is just so difficult to write but it doesn't seem like they even try to.

Moving to another famous trope in his fanfics: soulmate stories. I find it very ooc that he would actually accept he has a soulmate: he wouldn't believe it, he's literally the most paranoid character of tvdu, Klaus would 100% believe it's just a plot made to control him and he would probably kill his soulmate, only to regret it forever. Or those "I've been seeing her/having dreams about her for a thousand of years, she's without a doubt the person I'm meant to love forever", what?? 😭

If Klaus ever saw this person in real life, there are just two possibilities I can think of:

A) he would be extremely paranoid and would kill this person on the spot

B) he would be extremely paranoid, but decides to not kill x person for some barely explained reason and would get to know her/him and perhaps fall in love.

I'm aware Klaus can and has been soft in canon: with his family (in occasions, more in New Orleans modern era), with Hayley, Marcel, and Cami. I mean, Klaus loved Cami so much he actually begged her to not leave him, to fully turn into a vampire because he was terrified of losing her, and a decade after her death he was still in love with her (something a certain part of the fandom fails to see lmao).

The fanfics where he cheats with Hayley/Cami/Caroline/ Genevieve/Aurora or he just cheats while he's in a relationship also are ooc imo. If he's in a commited relationship and he loves the person he's with, I don't see him as the cheater type, especially because he wasn't sleeping around in the program.

But either way, show me the fanfics with true depiction. Show me fanfics where he's so screwed up that he continually pushes the person he loves away, where he constantly hurts them with/without intention as he did to his siblings, where he constantly uses his s/o for his own personal gain or similar. Where he's actually his true self, the man he was in tvd before having Hope and even after having Hope, because she actually did not change him that much.

I think I only found three fics like that: one in ao3 called I Would Hurt A Fly, where the oc was a witch or something like it and he used her as a personal sex toy/blood bag but there were slight hints of his love but sadly was deleted.

Or the ones written by @viavolterra and @saintsir4n, the way they write Klaus is the closest I've ever seen to his canon self and it's genuinely good writing. Patisserie is also a really good written fanfic that writes the characters well, but it's a poly Mikaelson fic (which it's even better, the more the best)

Either way, a violent man isn't gonna change with the power of love and family. The Originals tried doing that with Hope and they failed, because Klaus was the same man he was at the start, just slightly less mean to his family.

#klaus mikaelson #niklaus mikaelson #klaus mikaelson x reader #klaus mikaelson fanfiction #niklaus mikaelson fanfiction #klaus mikaelson imagine #mikaelson family #hope mikaelson #hayley marshall #the originals #the vampire diaries #tvd #to #joseph morgan

[autumnmobile12]

The Vampires in Castlevania

Vlad III Dracula Ţepeș (Impaler) was a real person.  He was a Wallachian voivode who was born sometime between 1429 and 1431, and he died in 1476.  The exact manner of his death has been lost to history, but the common belief is he was beheaded in battle and his head was sent to Sultan Mehmed II in Constantinople as proof of his death.

As for Bram Stoker’s Dracula, some historians are starting to doubt the prince was the actual inspiration for the famous vampire.  One of the reasons for this is Stoker was a very thorough note-taker, but none of his notes for writing Dracula mention Vlad III or any of his lifetime achievements/atrocities.  So it’s possible Stoker only chose the name ‘Dracula’ because he knew it translated as ‘son of the Devil.’  Further reading - Dracula: Sense and Nonsense by Elizabeth Miller.

Carmilla is the name of a lady vampire in the novella Carmilla by Sheridan le Fanu, a story that is actually older than Stoker’s novel.  It features a lesbian relationship between Carmilla and the protagonist, Laura, and was written as a criticism of the Victorian view of women, specifically repressed sexuality.

Varney also comes from a book.  Varney the Vampire or The Feast of Blood was a penny dreadful written by James Malcolm Rymer and Thomas Peckett Prest.  (I haven’t read this one all the way through, but there is a scene where Varney is struggling to get over a garden wall, and I think that’s hilarious.  Not exactly apex predator material.)

Varney:  You think you have me stymied, don’t you.

Trevor:  No, I think a garden wall has you stymied.

Lenore is the name of a German poem written by Gottfried August Bürger.  It’s about a woman named Lenore who curses God because her beloved did not come back from war, so Death kidnaps her to reunite them, effectively condemning her soul for eternity.  It’s not about a vampire, but the poem has had a hand in influencing vampire literature.

Anyway, does anyone else really want to see Lenore cheering Trevor on in the last battle?  Or stealing the knife and ending Death herself.  Cause I do now.

The closest thing to a vampire in Viking folklore is the draugr, although this creature is more of a restless ghost than what we think of as a vampire.  They haunt the graves of the dead and guard the treasures they acquired in life by driving humans insane, drinking their blood, eating their flesh, and other nasty things.

Side note:  I’m really curious as to what led Godbrand to becoming a vampire.  Immortality didn’t really play a huge factor in Old Norse culture since the Vikings believed a glorious death in battle was the one and only way to go to Valhalla.  Other deaths that were deemed shameful or unworthy landed you in Helheim, which I really need to address further in a separate post.

Japan also doesn’t have an exact vampire equivalent, but they do have some yokai spirits that have vampire-like characteristics, including but not limited to:

Nukekubi:  A flying head that detaches from its human body at night and attacks people to drink their blood.

Rokurokubi:  A similar creature to nukekubi except the head doesn’t detach but rather travels from the body via an elongated neck.

Nure-Onna:  The ‘drenched woman’ is a large serpent with the head of a woman that drinks blood.

Personally, I would have loved to see Cho’s head fly off to attack someone simply to see Sypha, Alucard, and Trevor briefly panic.

#castlevania #castlevania netflix #dracula castlevania #castlevania carmilla #lenore castlevania #godbrand castlevania #castlevania vampires #cho castlevania #varney castlevania #death castlevania #trevor belmont #alucard castlevania #adrian tepes #sypha belnades #norse mythology #viking vampires #japanese vampire #yokai #lgbtq+ books #sorta #bram stoker #sheridan le fanu #carmilla novella #dracula novel #draugr #penny dreadful #the big bang theory reference

[see-arcane]

considering it was the late 1800s, do you think Seward and VH are oblivious to Jonathan's watchfulness because Stoker couldn't justify writing Jonathan implying that "vampirism and blasphemy are fine if it's for Mina, actually" beyond his initial declaration? We don't seem to get much more of it directly from Jonathan's entries either after that, just by implication.

I wouldn't be surprised if that was a factor.

Considering all the very potent metaphors at work in the premise of 'God has denied love and protection to my beloved over X Violation and/or X State of Being which is beyond their control, and I have decided our love is more holy than any decision of the Almighty, and I would rather be a monster with her than shun/destroy her As Is the Righteous Thing to Do,' Stoker was already dancing on the edge of acceptability with Jonathan making his secret vow even once.

But thankfully, that single vow--and the adamant refusal to even pretend to make a new 'Yes honey, I will absolutely vampire martyr-murder you like a good Christian boy! God says it's chill just like it was for Lucy and everyone else Dracula has snacked on for untold centuries! God's will be done!'--likely flew over a lot of heads back in the day (as it does now) and simply landed in a lot of hearts with the more obvious factor of...

"Oh. He is literally willing to brave Hell and eternal damnation as the conscripted undead, possibly even cutting down his stake-wielding friends, just to protect and be with his beloved? ...That's kind of hot."

Especially during a period when romance was basically just a bonus to tack on to the Job of Being Married. Jonathan Harker is proven multiple times to be the un-Victorian Victorian man, running from the Brides (mistress stand-ins), happily letting his wife take the lead and holding her up as his equal until he's peer pressured out of it (which leads to dangerous consequences! Social mores fucked everything up! And He Only Follows New Directions with Mina's Approval Going Forward!), and now here's this romantic motherfucker ready to skin Dracula and French kiss the Devil so long as it sees his beloved safe and un-slaughtered, even if she isn't ~perfect and saintly and non-monstrous~.

Girls gays and goths of 1897 were definitely fanning themselves at the next tea party book club once they reached October 3rd.

Even without the ell gee bee tee undertones to glean from Stoker's own romantic leanings, the idea of 'selfish' personal love, of a mere human being, getting held up as more important than God, someone worth Hell, was extremely spicy to depict during that period. If Stoker had had Jonathan repeating himself over and over regarding his secret plans, it would have started to sound a bit like writing a smitten Poe protagonist. Which would also be sexy! But it'd risk taking some of the heroic shine off of him towards the end.

Better to let it hang over the narrative's neck in silence like an axe waiting to fall.

Or a kukri.

#in all ways but physical I am sitting with my Dracula book club mutuals around the tea service in 1897 making Poignant Eye Contact #as we all talk about Jonathan Harker's spiciness the way Jack Seward talks about his iciness #'I love the plot' we say; daydreaming about a Beloved so devoted they'd do an anime transformation and slaughter our enemies for us #jonathan harker #dracula #re: dracula #dracula daily

[mermaidsirennikita]

Louis de Pointe du Lac, as originally written, could be regarded as one of lit's most famous "also rans", someone who was originally positioned as Thee Tragic Figure of the series, only to be almost immediately superseded both in the readers' and the author's minds with Lestat. Like, you know Louis because of the original book, but Lestat is the one everyone talks about, Lestat drives the rest of the series, Lestat has all the best lines.

And the movie, as much as I personally don't like it, only sort of dug this further into the pop cultural understanding of the story. Brad Pitt is at his most "I am relying on pretty" boring and sulky; when there is a performance, it's largely annoying. And Tom Cruise... I mean, it's literally nothing next to what Sam Reid does in my mind, but it was at least very off-brand for him at the time, and he was doing SOMETHING, and he (and Kirsten Dunst) have the most iconic Moments, the camp, the arguably most memorable part of the movie (the very end with the Sympathy for the Devil cover playing us off).

So it's honestly SUCH a testament to the innovation of the show's writing and the brilliance of Jacob Anderson's performance that Louis has been reinvented, not only as a compelling protagonist, but as a character that is EASILY as complex and multilayered as more traditionally antiheroic/villainous types like Lestat and Armand and Claudia. He's more than the beautiful, tragic object of Lestat and Armand's affections, he's more than the guy telling us the story.

Louis is self-loathing and self-aggrandizing; he's victimized by Lestat, and he manipulates Lestat, very aware of his own emotional hold over him (might we note how much agency Louis had over Claudia's turning, and how Lestat in no way would've done that if not for Louis... and that act was arguably one of the most selfish in the series, if emotionally understandable). He's controlled by Armand, yet we get hints that he's actually quite dangerous and perhaps in some sort of self-delusion about just how dangerous he is (and Assad certainly plays Armand like he's nervous as fuck about Louis knowing the truth--and I don't think that's JUST about the possibility of Louis leaving him once he finds out).

Louis tells himself that he loved Claudia more than anything and that she was his "spark in the dark", when we see that in reality their relationship deteriorated over time and continued to do so, even after the person who was seemingly a wedge in their relationship was vanquished. We see hints, perhaps, that Claudia was no more the ideal daughter in his mind than Lestat was the ideal lover.

And that last scene in the premiere? When we're not sure who the "you" is? Sad and kind of horrifying, too. Because like--what will Louis do to Claudia to further his own love and obsessions? Who does Louis prioritize more--Claudia, Lestat, Armand? Maybe none of the above. Maybe himself and what or who he thinks will stave off his own loneliness, his need for love and validation and, yes, power.

None of this is a criticism of the character. The show already did something SO good and SO smart by turning Louis from a white slave owner to a Black man with money and social standing, still so held back by the laws and environment of his day. Vampirism gave him agency, yet the show, in season one, showed the potential for Louis to still be the perpetual tragic victim (in episode five especially). And maybe they'll still slip up and do that.

But increasingly, with the reveal in the s1 finale and the s2 premiere, I think we're getting the implication that the thing Louis could be protecting himself from mentally (with some help from Armand--I don't think Louis's memory issues are all Vampire Magic, though) is something horrible that he did. A choice he made. Because Louis does have agency, and the narrative allows him to be someone with conflicted desires and a complicated sense of self. Someone who doesn't love PRETTILY. Someone who is manipulated and manipulates.

Like, I've joked about him being this kind of like vampiric Helen of Troy because of the allure he holds for powerful figures like Lestat and Armand, but I also think it's so powerful to explore the way that Louis uses that appeal and ALSO makes fucked up decisions on his own because he is... into being adored, frankly. Even if the people who adore him also hurt him. He gets caught up in his own romanticized retellings of his life story, whether heartfelt or tragic, because in those retellings he can pretend that he had no choice, he had no ability to say otherwise.

But like--Louis could have stopped that woman from being decapitated, potentially. Louis didn't have to walk away from human affairs. He chose to do so, just like he chose to beg Lestat to turn Claudia. Just like he chose to deny her Lestat's true death.

And I think there's like, an attempt to reckon with this in the unreliable narration of the books, but I also think that this is so dependent, in Anne Rice's version, on spinning to Lestat... That Louis's culpability and untruths are overshadowed by his Everything. Here, the story lets us soak in Louis's mind, and Jacob Anderson's performance really seals that. I find it so smart.

#interview with the vampire #one of the only shows that gets me excited enough to meta rant these days #anyway jacob anderson i love your work #(to be clear i love everyone's work this is truly one of the strongest casts on tv)

[alpaca-clouds]

Some thoughts on Nocturne

Okay, we finally have a trailer and some actual information on the show, I think it is kinda fun to speculate, right? And just have some thoughts. No, scratch that: Actually I got a lot of thoughts. Even though barely anything is confirmed.

Firstly: Yeah, let's face it, it does not look like there is a ton of plot tonna survive from the two games inspiring it. Which undoubtedly will once again leave the game fans angry. But even though I enjoyed the heck out of Symphony of the Night (still gotta play Rondo full), I still think it is kinda a good thing. Because most Castlevania games are fairly light on story. Which - I said this before - is okay. It is totally okay for a videogame to be like: "Slay big monster." But if you want to translate it into a more narrative focused medium, you gotta change stuff.

I was originally kinda sceptical about the entire French Revolution thing for two reasons. 1) Well, technically I doubt that the French Revolution is still gonna happen after how the first series ended. But that might just be me. 2) Western Media, but American Media especially sucks when it comes to portrayels of the French Revolution as it usually goes back to the "There were good people on both sides!" kinda outlook, that does not really get the revolution and everything that was going on.

Funnily enough the thing that made me a bit more optimistic on this point is just them making Annette Black and from what I gather from that preview article released two days someone who has escaped slavery. I mean, game!Annette is just the usual passive kinda woman for the most part. And this is... definitely more interesting than that.

Especially given there is also another detail that nobody seems to acknowledge: Outside of showrunner Clive Bradley, all the episode writers (Temi Oh, Testament and Zodwa Nyoni) are Black. Which kinda seems like a very conscious choice. And given that the French Revolution does not get the credit it deserves as an abolition movement and something that definitely also helped to lead to the Haitain Revolution, I start to get my hopes up that they are gonna actually work with that aspect of the (hi)story.

One thing that is also interesting to me - though also kinda iffy - is the thing with Orlox and Richter's mother.

Iffy because it makes Richter join the ranks of Castlevania protagonists at least partly inspired by the death of a woman. What is it with this franchise and that fucking refrigirating warehouse filled with women?! I mean, Jesus, you people are aware that man can actually be inspired to do stuff for other reasons than a woman dying, right?!

But... We also know that Orlox does not seem to be the main antagonist, but apparently is someone who ends up making uneasy allies with Richter and Co., which kinda makes me hope that there is actually gonna be a bit more nuance to this than it appears at first glance.

Orlox says in the trailer that Richter's mom killed someone very dear to him (honestly, if this is gonna be another refrigerated woman, I am gonna flip a fucking table, though I guess I also do not want buried gays) and a part of me kinda hopes that it might go into the direction I brought up concerning my Belmont family headcanon with this discussing the idea of "killing all vampires is kinda bad, too".

Another thing about Orlox is, too, that he is not white. I read him as Black originally, but given that he is voiced by Zahn McClarnon, who is indigenous, I am gonna assume Orlox here is of Indigenous heritage. Which is gonna make for an interesting storybeat, given that in the series so far we had non-white vampires, yes, but... none of them had much in terms of story, let alone even voicelines.

Especially given another thing...

Given from what we see in the trailer, there definitely is gonna be a theme of "nobility = vampires" going on here. We can only guess about how much of it being like actual: "Oh, yeah, all nobles are vampires!" But there are definitely gonna be some vampires nobles opposed to the revolution. That seems to be pretty clear.

Aaaaaand... that makes me wonder, whether or not there is actually gonna be some commentary about the different ranks within vampire society.

Let me explain: All vampires with voicelines (or, heck, NAMES) within the original Castlevania series were nobles of some sort. It was what in other franchises would be called Vampire Lords. Well, with the exception of Ratko, that is, who explicitly is a soldier. Most of the vampire soldiers are just faceless characters with the same four designs repeating over and over. They are just the canon fodder who dies, when the heroes need their action scenes. But... That always made me wonder what vampire society actually looked like for these people.

And given the time this is now set in... and that Orlox is apparently indigenous... I kinda doubt that he is a vampire lord, given the times. If we have the vampire nobility being actual nobility... They gotta be racist, right?

Maybe I am just conjecturing too much here. But... That would actually make for an interesting idea.

Also, also... In the original show there is not a single Black or Arabian vampire. Which is also... interesting. Just saying.

We also know that the main antagonist seems to be Erzsebet Báthory (rather than Shaft or Dracula, though obviously this could also be the trailer trying to mislead us).

Fun Fact: Did you know that there is two vampires in the Castlevania games based on historical serial killers, who these days are both presumed to have been innocent? (Bathory and de Rais.)

This is something where I am super interested to see, where they are going to go with the character. Because there definitely is this historical assumption these days that she might have been innocent - and man would that make for a more interesting character than her being actually just a child murderer.

We so far see too little of her to really speculate much. But I definitely find it interesting that they have chosen her as the antagonist.

Also... There is this whole thing of Vampire Messiah and all of that going on and blocking out the sun and what not. And I kinda do wonder if anyone is gonna go like: "Uhm, yeah, without a sun we cannot grow shit and everyone is gonna starve, including vampires!"

Other more short form thoughts:

We see this night creature apparently saving Annette from a vampire or other night creature. What's up with that? Or is it even a night creature? We definitely see night creatures in that big eclipse scene, but there issomething else that might be going on here. Because...

Admittedly, the one vampire I have trouble placing in my theory is this one. She does seem to be on the side of Bathory in this based on everything we see in the trailer. From all I can find, she does not have a name as far as I could find. But she does fight Annette and all of that. And she definitely is Black, making me wonder what her story is.

BUUUUUT... If you look at her full design in the scene where she is fighting Annette, she looks remarkably like the night creature saving Annette in the above screenshot. So...

We see those masked figures in the trailer, with the clear implication that they are vampires. And last night (well, European night that is) someone on one of the servers was like: "Hey, is the blond masked guy Alucard with short hair?" And I originally brushed it off. But... I also think now they might be right, because he has normal ears and not poity vampire ears. And that is only something we saw in Alucard so far (not that we see a ton of his ears - which made me to always assume for my fics he has pointy ears, but I crossreferenced the models and yeah, no, Alucard has normal ears). So, either this is Alucard... or some other dhampir. Probably not a full-blooded vampire though.

In this one shot of what seems to be Annette using her magic, we see that she has a Fleur-de-lis either painted, tattooed or branded on her right hand. And I gotta wonder what is up with that. Given that she is a freed/runaway slave, I do wonder whether she has some ties to the royal family in one way or another?

We do see Maria summon what clearly looks like Byakku. And I am wondering how they are gonna go about Maria's powerset. Because it is another thing were the games do not have a ton of story happening. She summons beasts that are strictly linked to East Asian mythology, even though she is not from East Asia because of... reasons. I certainly hope she is gotta get more of a reason to do so here. (Especially given her entire Ninja-thing in Symphony, that made about as much sense lol Please note: I love game!Maria. It is just kinda a hilarious "Japanese games will do this" thing to me.)

We do not see a ton of Tera using magic in the trailer. Buuuuut in this scene she uses ice magic and definitely uses the same hand sign for it Sypha uses. She also vaguely has the same color scheme (blue and black) as the speakers do. And the same blue eyes like Sypha. Is she related to the speakers somehow? (And given the role that the Romani people also kinda had in terms of the revolution: Will we just stick with the speakers taking over the roles of Sinti and Roma?)

What is going on in this scene?

I mean, we definitely see Richter using magic in the trailer (which still makes a ton of sense to me, given he is gonna be as much of a descendent of Sypha as he is of Trevor). But this... does kinda seem as if he might have something more than just normal magic going on there.

Also: I just adore that half of the trailer Richter is crying. Someone hug this poor boy.

Finally: I sure hope it will keep up the gay levels of the series so far xD

#castlevania #castlevania netflix #castlevania nocturne #richter belmont #maria renard #speculation #castlevania nocturne speculation #castlevania annette #castlevania orlox #castlevania tera #french revolution #history

[sleeplessgreaser]

Animal Room (1995)

Directed by Craig Singer, starring Matthew Lillard and Neil Patrick Harris, this movie is WILD. If you like Matthew Lillard, or you just enjoy strange and obscure movies, it's possible you've heard of this one! Well, I decided to write an essay on it, because I have autism I love this movie for some odd reason. Also, it is impossible to google information about this movie so consider this my version of Wikipedia for the movie, Animal Room.

WARNING: This movie, and the following post, contains a lot of dark themes. Please be aware that this movie includes murder, suicide, peer abuse, substance abuse, domestic abuse, animal abuse, rape, religious themes, satanic themes, gun violence, and very graphic depictions of pretty much all of the above.

Still interested? Alright, let's get into it then. (Also, this is really long, sorry.)

This movie is strange, confusing, terrifying, shocking, and downright disturbing. It supposedly takes place in the near future, though the exact year isn’t defined, and this can be seen through odd clothing styles and the occasionally weird setting choices. I would say a lot of it is inspired by the suburban gothic dystopian genre? (Niche, I know, but stay with me here.) Topped off with a hint of The Matrix… are you still here? Okay, cool, because it’s only going to get weirder.

First off, we need to know all of the characters, and there are a lot. Many characters have their names mentioned in passing, and as a result we don’t really know who is who, so I will do my best to explain them all.

The first person we see is known as Pink, played by Ryan Payne Bell. He’s a pale redhead with frizzy hair, typically seen wearing a bowler hat and trench coat. Pink is a part of Doug Van Housen’s gang, who we soon find hanging out on the pier of a seemingly abandoned carnival. Doug, often referred to as simply ‘Van Housen’, is played by Matthew Lillard. He has jet-black hair, styled in a messy bowl cut, and he wears multiple different outfits throughout the movie, always consisting of whites and blacks. His style could only be described as “modern vampiric”. (Which actually makes a lot of sense, once you get to know him.) His girlfriend, Shelly, played by Lori Heuring, has long blond hair and can usually be found hanging off of Doug’s arm. The other members of the gang include Eddie, Porky, and Hinge. Eddie LeMaster, played by Brian Vincent, has short brown hair and is usually wearing a leather jacket or a sleeveless shirt. Porky, played by Eddie Malavarca, can easily be recognized by his bright red (sometimes black) bandana and curly black hair. And finally, Hinge, played by Dechen Thurman, has straight brown hair that comes down to his shoulders and is always carrying, if not actively reading, a book.

As far as I can tell, the hierarchy of the gang is as follows: Doug is the leader, Shelly is his “consort” of sorts (she isn’t really treated as part of the gang, but more like an ally who gets special treatment), Hinge is Doug’s confidant while Eddie is the main instigator, and Porky and Pink are the goons who hang around just to be a part of the fun and do what they’re told. Hinge and Eddie seem to be important to Doug – Eddie is loud and excitable, likes to start shit and cause chaos, while Hinge is quiet and reserved and silently encourages Doug’s bad behavior. We see throughout the movie that Doug is often annoyed by Eddie’s behavior (along with Pink’s and Porky’s), whereas with Hinge he seems to enjoy his company. We see him often leaning on Hinge’s shoulder, listening to him explain complex topics or just zoning out while Hinge is reading a book. Their relationship is subtle, as Doug treats Hinge as if they were friends, meanwhile with the other three he’s a bit more leader-ly.

Eventually we meet our protagonist, Arnold Mosk, played by Neil Patrick Harris. Arnie is a young boy, with short blond hair and thin glasses, who is actively dealing with a drug problem. In his free time, Arnie sneaks into the school auditorium and takes hallucinogens while sitting out in front of the stage. He has no friends (minus Gary), no social life, and he talks like an absolute nerd with a cynical, nihilistic, and severely depressive outlook on life. Here’s an actual quote from him when someone asked him “What happened?”: “Oh, nothing untypical. Barbarians rarely capitulate.” … I mean, come on. Is it any wonder he gets bullied?

Anyways, we learn that the school has designed a special “class” of sorts for troublesome students, and Arnie (being a drug addict) has to be a part of that class. As a result, he’s become a target for Van Housen and his gang – well at least, he’s become a bigger target than before. There are two adults in the school who are important to the story, the principal and a teacher who acts as Arnie’s therapist. Principal Jones, played by Stephen Pearlman, is the secondary antagonist of the story, as his choice to continue the use of the "Class for Troublesome Kids" is the main issue for our protagonist, and Doug Van Housen’s abuse is simply a result of it. Meanwhile, Doctor Rankin, played by Joesph Siflavo, is Arnie’s only advocate on the schoolboard as he actively argues against the use of the "Class for Troublesome Kids" or, at the very least, that Arnie doesn’t belong in there. Throughout the movie, Arnie visits Rankin’s office to confide in him about his troubles, and in turn Rankin tries to convince him to stop using drugs.

This special class, known by the students as the ‘Animal Room’, seems to be either an all-day class or at least a homeroom for the students that are assigned to it. Principal Jones claims that the class is for the sake of the 95% of students who are not troublesome, and that the 5% who are should simply be kept away from the rest so that the majority can succeed. However, this means that the 5% of students who are not a part of the “good” population are rounded up together and left to fight amongst themselves. This classroom is found in a basement area, at the end of a long hallway filled with short flights of stairs and graffiti, and security guards sit (or, most often, sleep) outside the door. In this classroom, we find Doug Van Housen and the rest of his gang (minus Shelly) and some other students who have been deemed troublesome, such as ‘Baldy’ (more on him later) and Arnie. This room is filled with shoddy desks and chairs, cement walls lined with pipes and ductwork, and a single television which is always playing the same thing: a recording of a man dressed in all black, similar to the security guards, with slicked back hair and wearing matrix-style sunglasses. This man is usually inaudible, but is always speaking in a very authoritative tone and staring directly at the camera. Watching this TV seems to be the only thing in the classroom the students are “permitted” to do, although there is rarely a teacher, or even a security guard, inside the room to stop them from doing otherwise. If things start to get loud, however, the guards outside will come in to stop it.

Next, we meet Gary Trancer, played by Gabriel Olds. He’s Arnie’s only friend, and apparently has been his friend since they were kids, but in the past few years they’ve grown apart. Gary’s girlfriend, Debbie, played by Amanda Peet, apparently either temporarily dated or had a one-night stand with Eddie LeMaster, and as a result Eddie holds a grudge against Gary for “stealing his girl”. This, combined with Gary’s brave attempts to protect Arnie from the school bullies, makes him into a target as well.

Now that we know all the characters and their roles, let’s get into the actual story. First off, we truly learn just how bad things are at this school when Van Housen’s gang ambushes Arnie in the bathroom, and I’m begging you to skip the rest of this paragraph if you’d rather not be horrified by something that is so terrifyingly real it truly sickens me. Ready? Doug begins to beat Arnie, while Pink and Eddie are taunting him and Hinge is flicking the light switch on and off like it’s some kind of nightmare. We see Porky walk out of a bathroom stall, buckling his pants, and the boys grab Arnie and drag him into the stall, while he’s struggling and crying. Doug, who’s standing over the toilet facing Arnie, grabs him by the back of the head and shoves him face-first into the bowl filled with Porky’s shit. Arnie is gagging, suffocating, and essentially being drowned, until finally he stops struggling and allows himself to go still. The gang leaves him there, gasping, coughing, and puking on the floor of the bathroom. This scene may not be as bad in writing, but actually watching it play out legitimately made me feel sick.

Soon after, we see Arnie and Doug sitting in the principal’s office – Arnie, looking half-dead, and Doug playfully giving himself paperclip nails. The principal sits down and begins to scold both of them, as if Arnie had been equally in the wrong, and then proceeds to deal out zero punishment.

We then see Doug making his way home. He walks through a cemetery, passes by a lone guitar player sitting on a small dock playing Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata (No. 14 in C-sharp Minor). His home is a giant mansion, and when he walks in he immediately strips naked in front of his butler, then walks up the stairs, leaving the butler to pick up his clothes. Meanwhile, Arnold is having a hallucination about being at a bar with creepy old men, presumably the one where he got his drugs, and is being strip-teased by a woman in white lingerie while a baby cries in the distance.

I warned you that this movie was wild, and it's only going to get wilder from here!

The next thing that happens is that Van Housen’s gang, along with Shelly, bursts into the home of Shelly’s family (Shelly being Doug’s girlfriend, in case you forgot). Her mother is upstairs taking a bath, while her father and brother are sitting at the table eating dinner. Once again, if you'd rather not be traumatized by the horrifying actions of Doug Van Housen then I suggest you skip the rest of this paragraph. They start taunting and torturing her father, who is confined to a wheelchair and begins to have trouble breathing. Eddie grabs a trash bag and pulls it over her father’s head, suffocating him for a moment before dragging him out of his chair, meanwhile Doug has climbed the stairs to interrogate Shelly’s mother, who is now wearing a bathrobe. Doug asks for the gun owned by Shelly’s father, threatening to rape the mother among other things. She slaps him, then gets the gun and asks him to leave. As the gang heads out the door, Eddie hangs back and pulls Doug aside, whispering something. The camera cuts to Shelly’s mother, sitting on the stairs, and Eddie walks up, grabs her by the hair and drags her to the bedroom as she screams.

I warned you, this movie is disturbing.

Later, in Dr. Rankin’s office, Arnie tells him a story about how a group of thugs once beat up Van Housen, and how slowly, over the next year, each of those thugs disappeared and were eventually found dead.

Later that day, Gary visits Arnie’s home to discuss how they’ve grown apart. He wants to reconnect, and they talk about going on a trip to the Caribbean, something they had always dreamed of doing back when they were children. They decide to finally take that trip in the summer, as soon as their final year of high school is over and before Gary has to leave for college. It’s important to note that Gary is the only person in the school, besides Dr. Rankin, who treats Arnie like a regular human being. Everyone else, even casual peers, see him as a freak or weirdo. Also, once Gary leaves, Arnie scolds his mother for being a drunk, and for acting weird when Gary came to visit. (To be fair, she was acting very weird, but it was obviously out of innocence, and I don’t think she deserved to be scolded like that by her own son.)

When we get to see Doug Van Housen’s room, we learn a bit more about who he is as a person, and Why He's Like That. Religious paraphernalia, paintings and statues line the walls alongside gothic hanging lamps and candles. His bed has a gigantic headboard, and we see him lying in bed wearing reading glasses, looking through a book that mentions King Henry VI.

We now get to meet Baldy, played by Huckleberry Fox, in the Animal Room. He’s drawing at his desk, while Van Housen’s gang is discussing hypotheticals, and Doug walks over and begins messing with him. Doug starts nosing the side of Baldy’s face, whispering in his ear tauntingly, then spits on the back of his head, where we see he has a tattoo of a ghoul. Baldy jumps up, turning around to yell “Why are you such a filthy scumbag?!” The gang all jump to defend him before a guard walks in to break it up.

Arnie has a hallucination about the carnival, where he finds the rotting corpse of Doug Van Housen wrapped up in plastic like a game prize. Doug asks him, “Do you see what your friend did to me?”

We cut to Baldy, who is helping to run a recording session for the band, Misfits (yes, the real band), and Van Housen’s gang is sneaking into the studio. When he isn’t looking, they sneak into the room and grab him. The band, on the other side of the glass (which is apparently one sided, as they can’t seem to see the events on the other side) begins playing again while the gang begins to interrogate Baldy for calling Doug a “filthy scumbag”. After a few minutes of torment, they shove Baldy to the ground and Doug begins slamming his head into the floor. The others look afraid, Eddie yells at him to stop, Baldy is bleeding and has gone limp. Doug wipes a hand over Baldy’s face, kisses his forehead and says “Goodnight.”

We then cut to Baldy’s father, sitting at home and staring at a picture of him, then we cut back to the gang who has now moved to their usual hangout on the carnival pier.

Shelly arrives (she must have gone home for a bit, since she had been there when Doug killed Baldy), and she’s holding a small rabbit. Porky and Pink are cooing over it, and Shelly brings the rabbit over to Doug for him to hold. She watches as he twists the bunny’s neck, killing it, and she begins crying and screaming hysterically. Porky and Pink decide to escort her home, Hinge and Eddie leave soon after, and Doug is left alone.

Pink, who is now seen walking around town, is cornered by Baldy’s father who pulls out a gun and shoots him. He falls dead on the street.

At school, in the Animal Room, Eddie pulls the fire alarm. Everyone is evacuated out of the building, but Doug corners Arnie and keeps him from leaving. Doug begins telling him the story of Job from the bible. Oh, and also he tells Arnie, “I want your blood in my mouth.”

Later, in Dr. Rankin’s office when Arnie is recounting the event to him, Rankin admits to Arnie that he’s going to be leaving the school due to a job offer. Arnie leaves, and when we next see him he has a gun. He pretends he’s pointing it at Doug, then considers pointing it at himself. We see him sitting in the school hallway, leaning against the lockers and fiddling with the gun. He puts the gun in his mouth, and a teacher and janitor catch him before he pulls the trigger. He points the gun at the janitor, who pulls out his own gun and shoots him.

Arnie ends up in the hospital, in a coma. His mother and Gary are there with him.

Van Housen’s gang, which has now dwindled to only four members, is once again hanging out on the carnival pier. Gary approaches them, holding a gun and pointing it directly at Doug. Doug makes Hinge, Eddie and Porky leave, then stands with his arms out, daring Gary to shoot. Gary screams, shooting off five rounds, each one missing Van Housen. Doug walks to Gary, carefully taking the gun from his hands. He shoots the last round into the air, then leaves with his friends.

Debbie (Gary’s girlfriend) is throwing a party. Gary is there, but sitting alone in another room, away from the other guests. Through the doors come bursting Eddie and Porky, behind them is Hinge who has Doug hanging off of him. As Doug steps out from behind Hinge we see he’s sporting a brand new look. His hair is slicked back, and a dark red circular mark is branded onto his forehead. His face is pale, and he’s wearing all black. The gang leaves, and it’s just Gary and Doug, alone.

Doug says he’s going to hurt Arnie as soon as he’s out of the hospital, and Gary tackles him. They immediately begin throwing punches, until Doug gets his hands around Gary’s throat and begins choking him. Doug tosses him to the ground, then pulls out the gun he took from him. Doug sits down on the floor, setting the gun in front of him and Gary grabs it, putting it directly to Doug’s forehead who then pulls his hand down to point the gun into his mouth. Gary backs away, dropping the gun fearfully.

Doug says, “Gary. I will be there when your children wake up. I will be there when you get married. I will be there at your next birthday. I will be there when little Arnie gets out of the hospital. You hear what I’m saying to you, Gary? I will always be there.”

“I will always be there.”

On the wall is a decorative sword. Gary takes it down as Van Housen holds his arms out, once again inviting him to make a move. Gary slashes the sword across his chest, mimicking Doug’s corpse in Arnie’s hallucination. Doug falls limply to the ground.

The police are called.

Officers walk into the room.

Doug is still holding the sword.

They shoot him.

My Thoughts:

Okay, so first of all, Gary was too good for this world. He was the only likeable character in the entire movie, and I was devastated when he died, especially because it was so sudden and they really make you think he’s in the clear. Second, Doug Van Housen, and his group, are absolutely fascinating to me. Their dynamics are just so intriguing, especially the one between Doug and Hinge. Of course, there are so many oddities about this movie that it all feels like a fever dream. The clothing choices, the symbolism, the dialogue, it’s all so wild.

Honestly, I don’t know if I would recommend this movie. On one hand I think it is fascinating, and could be very interesting to some people, but on the other hand it is hard to understand and will likely just leave you questioning things. You’re telling me Doug Van Housen has killed at least five people and faced no charges for any of those murders, when clearly everyone knows he did it? And then when Pink is killed, no one mourns him, and his death is barely even recognized by the characters. Baldy’s father had two seconds of screentime: mourning his child, and shooting Pink. That event is never acknowledged after that. Then, Shelly was so in love with Doug that she forgot who he was, she forgot that he’s a psychopath. She thought she was special, but she wasn’t. He kills her rabbit and then she’s gone, and we don’t see her again. And what about her family? They tortured Shelly’s mother and father, and they just chose not to press charges?? And last but not least, Arnold, who ended up in a coma, is going to wake up one day and find out that his only friend is dead. He was already suicidal, his mother might as well pull the plug and let him go because as soon as he finds out about Gary he’ll probably try to off himself anyways.

Really, the only way to truly understand the movie is to watch it for yourself. As far as I know there is basically no way to buy it anywhere online, and no streaming services have it. Thankfully, someone on youtube has uploaded the whole thing for free. You can find it easily just by looking it up! If you want to know when certain things happen (so that you can skip them or skip to them) or if you have any questions regarding the movie, feel free to shoot me a message or leave a comment!

#animal room #animal room 1995 #doug van housen #matthew lillard #neil patrick harris #obscure movies #movie review #sleepless rants

[canonmisogynyvictimstournament]

PROPAGANDA

NATASHA ROMANOFF (Marvel Cinematic Universe) (CW: Forced Sterilization)

1.) Was reduced to “chick who fights” and wasn’t given any characterization at all outside of that up until Winter Soldier, the third movie in which she played a major role. Her sideplot in Age of Ultron revolved around dating Bruce, whom she apparently related to because she felt like a monster for not being able to have children (we’re never shown why she actually wants them, it was the first time she’d ever mentioned it), she was the only original Avenger to die before the final battle in Avengers: Endgame and her death was mostly used to give the other male Avengers a reason to fight on. Most of the movies she was in, she spent in a cat suit that was halfway unzipped. I think there are maybe four movies in the entire MCU where she interacts with another named female character. In general, she’s a super interesting character who was super underdeveloped despite being in a ton of movies.

2.) Due to being forcibly sterilized and not having a family of her own, she concludes that when someone has to sacrifice their life For The Greater Good^tm, it should be her (who has spent the past few years as a –if not The– leader managing the security of a superpowered, post-disaster Earth), instead of her guy friend (who has spent the past few years committing war crimes while hiding from his entire support network) because he had a family (that disappeared due to Magical Scifi Bullshit and Might come back if they succeed on their quest) that has been fully capable of supporting themselves while he’s been away secret agent-ing in the past and aware that he might not come back one day from his dangerous job.

Out of universe, there was very little merchandise of her (even in group shots) and it took ages for her to get her own movie in the Everyone Has Their Own Movie Or Three franchise.

3.) She was fridged to upset all the men in endgame and didn’t have a word spoken of her after her death unlike Tony who got a whole funeral.

CORDELIA CHASE (BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER/ANGEL THE SERIES) (CW: Pregnancy)

1.) (downs an entire bottle of vodka and slams it back on the table) SO. CORDY. Cordy started off as a supporting character in Buffy the Vampire Slayer. At the start she was your typical high school mean girl character, but as the show went on we got to see more depth to her character: her insecurities, her courage, her capacity for incredible acts of kindness. Then after the third season she moved into the show’s spin off, Angel, where from the beginning she was basically the show’s secondary protagonist. Her and Angel were the two mainstays of the show’s main cast, she gets the most episodes centered on her out of all the characters aside from Angel (and yes, I’ve checked), and we really got to see her grow from a very shallow and self-centered and kind of mean person to a true hero who was prepared to give up any chance at a normal life to fight the good fight while still never losing the basic core of her character. There were some… questionable moments like the episode where she gets mystically pregnant with demon babies and things got a bit iffy like halfway through season 3 where the writers seemed to run out of ideas for what to do with her outside of sticking her in this romance drama/love triangle situation with the main character but overall, pretty good stuff right? THEN SEASON 4 HAPPENED. In season 4 she gets stripped of literally all agency and spends pretty much the entire season possessed by an evil higher power, and while possessed she sleeps with Angel’s teenage son (who BY THE WAY she had helped raise as a baby before he got speed-grown-up into a teenager it was a whole thing don’t worry about it) and gets pregnant with like. the physical manifestation of the higher power that’s possessing her. it’s about as bad and stupid as it sounds and also is like the third time cordy’s got mystically pregnant in this show and like the fourth mystical pregnancy storyline overall (you will be hearing more on that note in other submissions I’m so sorry). after giving birth she goes into a coma, in which she remains for the rest of season 4 and the first half of season 5. SPEAKING OF WHICH DON’T THINK SEASON 5 IS GETTING OFF SCOT FREE HERE. yeah so in season 5 the show just FULLY starts trying to erase cordy’s existence. she gets mentioned ONCE in the first episode and then never again until halfway through the season where she wakes up, helps out Angel for a bit and encourages him in his fight against evil, and then goes quietly into that good night and dies so it can be all sad and tragic. I’d call it the worst fridging of all time but even THAT feels generous because the whole point of fridging is killing off a female character so a man can be sad, and after Cordy dies basically no one’s even sad about it because the show immediately goes back to pretending she never existed. she is not mentioned ONCE in the two episodes after she dies. in the whole stretch of time between her death and the end of the season she gets mentioned exactly four times. again, I counted. anyway the fun twist to all of this is that all of this happened because the actress who played cordy got pregnant before season 4 and joss whedon was so pissed off about this affecting his plans for the show that he decided to completely fuck over her character and then fire her and write her out of the show. so cordy’s a victim of both writing AND real life misogyny!! good times!!

2.) OH SO MANY THINGS they menaced by giving her terrible hair cuts, making her seem like she’d get together with the guy she loves (and who loves her back) but instead she was killed and when she was brought back, she got possessed by an evil entity who used her body to give birth to itself. afterwards she was in a long coma and died. her character was so throughoutly assassinated

3.) She got demonically pregnant TWICE - there was this real sense of a womb/ability to get pregnant as like, a place for evil to get in. She got positioned as femme fatale and evil mother. The actress basically got fired for being pregnant, and when she agreed to come back for a single final episode she specifically said they could do anything but kill off the character. Guess what happened

#polls #round 3 #week 6 #new #cw forced sterilization #cw pregnancy