do one good thing before you go

she will be wearing her little outfits as usual

* drops some Techno fanart I've done that I've probably posted before but I'm showing em again anyways *

ok so i posted this while half asleep so don't totally agree with it but the general gist is that dracula is the most influential vampire fiction, and all subsequent vampire fiction is either 'doing dracula' or purposely not 'doing dracula'

and draculas have. i don't know. a certain power dynamic to them. dracula is the power, and even when he 'makes' other vampires, they're subordinate to him — dracula's brides are effectively his thralls, only existing to do his bidding; lucy westernra is 'turned' but she's, again, only really a thrall, not an independent creature. other dracula-type vampire stories do the same kind of thing — in iwtv, the relationship between 'maker' and 'made' is paternalistic, and there's a sense that every 'made' vampire is less powerful than their maker; in vsmp, even though mechanically the fledgling vampires have the exact same powers as scott, scott is still the sire and his fledglings are all defined in relation to him (they are either loyal or not, but they cannot be entirely independent from him) and he wields the most social power in the vampire faction in every situation. so in every sense, people who were not vampires at the beginning of the story cannot ever 'become' vampires; they're never at the same level of power or authority as the original vampires in their stories. they cannot be, because dracula-type fiction establishes this as the baseline of dracula fiction. if you are 'doing dracula', you cannot become a vampire.

the obvious counter-example to this is to say, idk, what about twilight? there's no real sense that bella and edward are any lesser than carlisle - even as the father figure of the cullens he doesn't really have the authority - and when they come into contact with the volturi, the volturi aren't portrayed as 'more' in any sense other than tradition. and the answer to that is that twilight is an example of vampire fiction that is purposely not 'doing dracula'. it's baked into the story. everything about the vampires in twilight is set in contrast to dracula. vampires don't burn in the sun, they sparkle. vampires are not eternal and all-powerful, they go to school and have teenage problems. vampires don't have a built-in maker-made relationship. when a vampire is born (either as bella is or as renesmee), it is just as powerful as any vampire born in the last thousand years, or even more. and when you look at the story this way, it begs the question: if these 'vampires' are defined at every opportunity in contrast to dracula, and if they are purposely and dedicatedly inverting the dracula, are they actually vampires? you can call your fantasy creature anything you like, but that doesn't make it actually that thing (take the fae in acotar as an example, and how little they have in common with the fae of any story before 2015. they might be called fae but no reasonable person would argue they are actually the same thing as folklore fairies).

more digital art practice with v!Avid. He's mine now, guys

(og sketch below cut)