Fanfiction Fridays: Misconceptions and Truths About Vampires by glassteacup

“I believe what Yuuri is trying to convey is ‘Excuse me, Viktor. Did you say you’re a vampire?’” Phichit translates with grim cheer.

Yuuri’s squawk of distress confirms Phichit’s interpretation.

Viktor wrinkles his forehead, mystified. “Well, yes,” he says slowly.

Phichit hops up from the armchair to perch on the sofa’s arm, pulling Yuuri in protectively to his side. Yuuri tucks himself in and turns to gape at Viktor again.

It’s Viktor’s turn to boggle. “Wait. You mean you didn’t know, Yuuri?”

“No,” Yuuri snaps, eyes glittering and chin stuck out in the air.

Viktor’s jaw drops. Even the youngest newborn should be able to recognize their own kind. Has the state of turned vampires gotten to be so dreadful? Well, no. That can’t be it either. Phichit sensed him from at least three blocks away when they were stopped at the red light. “When were you turned?” he inquires. “If you don’t mind me asking,” he adds hastily for avoidance of risking any additional misunderstandings on this point.

Phichit points to himself. “1950s,” he says and then ruffles Yuuri’s hair, “And this one was around the 1900s.”

“Amazing,” Viktor murmurs. “How are you still alive?”

Now that October is properly upon us, my spooky loving heart is constantly begging for every vampire, ghost, magic, and every seasonal etcetera that I can get my eye globes on. I’d almost lost hope at finding a suitable fic for my Fanfiction Fridays post this month, but thankfully the Yuri!!! On Ice fandom was there for me, and among its multitudes of AUs I knew I could find the good vampire content I crave. glassteacup’s Misconceptions and Truths About Vampires wasn’t exactly what I was expecting–in only good ways–but what glassteacup is missing in perhaps more aesthetically vampiric characterization, they more than make up for with modern vampires just trying to get by and intriguing snippets of much deeper lore.

Magical Mondays: Who Gets to Be a Vampire?

(via goodreads)

I was recently reading the latest book in The Vampire Chronicles, Prince Lestat and the Realms of Atlantis. After the many ups and all-too-frequent downs of the series, reading the new installments comes out of the same schadenfreude-y curiosity that presumably leads other people to watch the Kardashians: namely, wanting to know what on earth these disaster (non)humans are up to now.

One of the major worldbuilding developments in the most recent books has been, as one might guess from the title, the ascension of Lestat into a sort of mutually-agreed-upon rulership of the vampire community. Even Lestat has acquired some self-awareness, over the years; he knows that he is not going to have the attention span to attend to every issue of the community, and so he forms a court of vampiric elders from across the world. While this has the immediate benefit for the reader of putting all the major players of the series in one place to stand around and be beautiful at each other, it also lends a seriousness to Lestat’s rule. His princeship is not symbolic, and for the first time the vampire community is less an arbitrary group of metahumans connected only by the fluke of their condition and more of an organized nation. And that, of course, means there needs to be rules.

In an increasingly plugged in and hyper-vigilant world where the existence of vampires is a very poorly guarded secret, it’s more important than ever that vampires maintain a low profile. As part of this (and as part of the mentality that vampires are not inherently evil despite their predatory nature) they are expected to behave in reasonably moral ways.

Except for that whole “don’t turn children” rule. (via wikipedia)

Don’t kill; only take enough blood to sate your hunger. Don’t drink from innocents; only take blood from those who are clearly bad people (you know, like, sex traffickers, murderers, people who don’t use their turn signal). Don’t broadcast your existence to humans—a “do as I say, not as I do” rule given Lestat’s history—as this endangers the entire vampire community. However, despite the rather checkered history of how all these people actually became vampires, there don’t seem to be any rules forthcoming about who gets to be a vampire.

Throwback Thursdays: Blade

My favorite thing about Throwback Thursdays is that it gives me an excuse and an opportunity to revisit old childhood favorites that I remember loving, but have all but forgotten the specific details of. For this week’s installment, I bring you Blade, the iconic vampire movie starring Wesley Snipes. This movie was the reason I started to love vampires, but watching it all these years later, I was no longer as impressed with it as I was when I was twelve. But I feel like that’s bound to happen to most things we love as children, and Blade was still an enjoyable, grungy, bloody, and sometimes outright entertainingly disgusting vampire romp.

Spoilers for the 1998 movie below.

Faith in the Night: Review of Such a Dark Thing: Theology of the Vampire Narrative in Popular Culture

I was thrilled when I got the chance to read M. Jess Peacock’s Such a Dark Thing: Theology of the Vampire Narrative in Popular Culture and review this academic treatise for our blog. Just seeing the title itself filled me with nerdy joy and anticipation. This is not the first time I’ve written about vampires and religion for this blog, and I hope it won’t be my last. Such intersections of fantastical genre pop culture media and religious studies/theology perfectly fits in with some of my own dearest interests, as well as the mission of the LGG&F blog, of course. The book does exactly what it says it will, looking at the symbolic value of the vampire in pop culture through a variety of theological lenses, some of which I’d thought of before, but many of which had never crossed my mind. Without further ado, let’s sink our teeth into this review (I’m sorry, I couldn’t resist #punsarealwaysintended).

Only Lovers Left Alive Is A Different Kind of Vampire Movie

I recently got my hands on a copy of Only Lovers Left Alive, a 2013 vampire movie starring Tilda Swinton and Tom Hiddleston. Despite both me and my mom being super hyped about it prior to its release, we both failed miserably at getting ourselves to a theater in our area where it was actually playing. I’d nearly forgotten my desire to see the movie at all when lo and behold, someone who’d purchased the movie at a different location brought it into the store where I work to return it. Sensing the hand of divine providence, I snatched it up, and as soon as we had a chance to sit down with it (and a glass of wine or two) we popped it into the DVD player.

How to describe what happened after that? Suffice it to say, Only Lovers Left Alive is not like any other movie I’ve seen.

Spoilers after the jump.

True Blood Season 3: More Misogyny and Stereotypes

I really used to like True Blood at one point in time—or at least I liked it a lot better than I do now—but Season 3 has to be the worst season thus far. I wasn’t happy with Season 2 and its portrayal of religion through an extremist group, but at the very least I didn’t hate everything that was happening. That’s not true of Season 3. The Tara storyline made this season painful to watch, and though it was by far the worst storyline, it was hardly the only awful thing happening. I wouldn’t be surprised to hear that the writers purposefully went out of their way to make Season 3 the most offensive, difficult, triggering season possible. And Tara’s rape plot is sadly not its only devolution into straight up misogyny.

Spoilers and trigger warning for mutilation, slut-shaming, mental issues, rape, and abuse up ahead.

True Blood Season 3: Tara, Misogyny, and Rape Culture

Trigger warning for rape ahead.

Well, after months of putting it off, I finally got around to finishing True Blood’s third season. Once again, I found myself absolutely adoring this show, while simultaneously hating a great deal of its themes. Last season put me off by its portrayal of religion, and it even featured a religious fanatic who attempted to sexually assault Sookie, because why the fuck not? This season also put me off by its gratuitous rape themes that existed for no damn reason. Despite being a really good show with an awesome female protagonist, True Blood’s biggest problem seems to be offensive clichés, and that is no more apparent than how the show treats both Tara and Eggs’s characters and their misogynistic and racist plotlines.

The Moth Diaries: a Sad Film Homage to the Gothic Tale, Carmilla

Trigger warning for cutting in the trailer!

October is one of my favorite months. You’ve got pumpkin-flavored everything, Halloween, and of course scary movies. I had heard about the film The Moth Diaries online, and I wasn’t sure what to expect. Was this going to be a horror movie, or another Hollywood flop? The only thing I knew was that it’s loosely based off of Carmilla, a Gothic lesbian novella written in 1871. I’ve never read the novel, but I’ve read about it online. The trailer seemed interesting enough (and not overly sexualized), so I watched the movie. It’s thought-provoking, yet rather hollow. Sure, I wasn’t expecting a romance film, but there was a lack of depth to all the characters. The most disappointing thing about the movie was the dynamic between the characters, and the role sex had in the plot.

Spoilers and a trigger warning for sexual themes, nudity, suicide, and blood after the jump.

Trailer Tuesdays: What We Do in the Shadows

I wanted to offer all of you a horror movie today. As one of the horror film lovers on this site—though my tastes tend towards the eye-roll worthy, admittedly—I feel that is it my duty to do so, especially in the spirit of this month. However, I’ve come to a realization that outside of a highly interesting-looking documentary on Quidditch (the sport of Harry Potter fame re-crafted for Muggle players) and a horror film about a Ouija board summoning that looks hilariously awful (like, Paranormal Activity 4 awful), there are just no movies I’d bother recommending. As such, I’m going to rec a film that’s already had its day in the sun but we’ve unfortunately missed talking about until now.

Vampire Academy: The Movie’s Vain, but the Protagonists Aren’t…

I don’t know about you, but this movie poster is rather off-putting.

Vampire Academy came out in February this year, and even though the film was directed by Mark Waters (who also directed Mean Girls), I hoped the fact that vampires were involved meant that it’d be a little thrilling. After recently watching the film with friends, though, I sadly can’t say that it was scary in the slightest. The moment the opening song started with “Live fast, die young, bad girls do it well…” I knew this wasn’t going to be a horror movie. By the time it ended, I was pleasantly surprised. While the story did follow typical high school problems (with vampires and romance of course), the two main characters were generally treated with respect. These leading ladies could fend for themselves and weren’t afraid to do it. Though the story wasn’t my cup of tea, I can appreciate what the movie did right: how they handled having two female protagonists.

Spoilers, and a trigger warning for animal cruelty after the jump!