Dylan Hague

Vampires are repelled by holy symbols generally. They all work. (Variation by Terry Pratchett: it matters whether the vampire recognizes the symbol.)

Vampires are repelled by faith, so the vampire hunter has to use a symbol they believe in. (Lots of riffs on this one. I recall a short story I read many years ago wherein a well-off suburbanite attempted to bribe a vampire, only for the vampire to scream & flee due to the suburbanite’s unshakable faith in Money.)

Vampires are repelled by symbols of whatever their beliefs were in life. (This might be a Tumblr original.)

It really is only crosses, but nobody is sure why. (Buffy the Vampire Slayer*.)

It actually has nothing to do with holy symbols; due to a quirk of how vampire brains work, they’re repelled by right angles. (Peter Watts, Blindsight)

Fertile ground for speculative worldbuilding, it seems.

My top five artists are Mayday Parade, My Chemical Romance, Paramore, the Avett Brothers, and Theophany.

My #1 song is Audrey Hepburn’s Moon River.

Sneak peek of something I’ve got cooking in my downtime. I’m a day late, but I figured I might as well share.

Holy crap, I forgot how fast I write action. I’ve been working on this draft for like three days, and I’m almost 4,000 words in. Working title: Captain Mick.

Some notes:

He’s a riverboat pilot, as one might expect. Legally, he doesn’t have to be, he can do whatever (in 1928, he was a boat pilot, a gaucho, and an aviator, so he’s already a Renaissance man), but a riverboat adventure sounded really fun to me. He was just a pilot for a local boating company, first mate on their flagship, but when the boss man disappeared, he ended up in charge of the whole show. He’s not crazy about the responsibility, but he does his best.

He has a knack for hearing “The Music”, which lets him do fun cartoony stuff. If he listens hard enough, he can hear the music of the world around him, and acting on beat gives him strange abilities.

Tremendous props to @AlexCalex_art over on Twitter for this portrait of Lila, the main character of my novel ALL THE ANGELS! Definitely pop over there and give their work a little love when you get the chance.

poor Frodo and Sam have to scale Egg-Sauron to get the Ring back. Sam blows up like four badniks with a frying pan. Frodo is openly weeping the entire time, because How Did It Get So Much Worse.

Sonic somehow gets the Ring for like, a second (grabbing rings is just what he does, of course he was gonna get it), and he just. Passes it off to Frodo. But he had it for just a second, which technically makes Sonic a Ringbearer, so they let him sail to the Undying Lands with Frodo and Gandalf.

poor Frodo and Sam have to scale Egg-Sauron to get the Ring back. Sam blows up like four badniks with a frying pan. Frodo is openly weeping the entire time, because How Did It Get So Much Worse.

Sonic somehow gets the Ring for like, a second (grabbing rings is just what he does, of course he was gonna get it), and he just. Passes it off to Frodo. But he had it for just a second, which technically makes Sonic a Ringbearer, so they let him sail to the Undying Lands with Frodo and Gandalf.