a n n a

season 1

this season is probably the most light hearted as well as visually light out of them all. there’s no real worries beyond your typical vampire-dad-related ones. bright colours such as orange and blues and yellows spring to mind which contrast and quietens the dark red.

season 2

things definitely get darker in season two. more lore, more character dynamics and more things to worry about. in turn, the visuals become darker. the colours from season 1 become darker and more synonymous with vampirism.

season 3

despite exploring darker themes, season 3 is weirdly more cozy to me. it may be because of the location change as the bricks are of course a warmer colour than the stone castle? also plaid. we can’t forget vlad’s plaid.

season 4

vlad’s probable blood addiction you will always be famous. had to represent. s4 is the darkest imo so i naturally had to mirror that. there’s more chaos too with the locations, storyline and sheer amount of characters.

season 5

honestly the easiest board to compile. the orange definitely makes a comeback in s5. is it the set designers being clever, or is it coincidence? who knows! (i do, its a coincidence). strangely, s5 is one of the quieter seasons imo, as they’re very restricted to garside for most of the season and all the students are gone . i tried to mirror this in this board!

In the show, the rings of Arianrhod are two magically bound rings; one wearer able to command the other wearer. The mother and son rings respectively. However my Welsh ass always picked up on the fact that Arianrhod is a character in Welsh mythology. So now I’m making that tumblr’s problem. yw!

From my primary school understanding of the story, Arianrhod is a noble woman in medieval Wales. She has a son against her will, to put it mildly, and becomes resentful of him. His name is Lleu. The Mother and the Son. Lleu is cast out of Arianrhod’s castle and told he cannot do anything without her permission, some sort of spell (Like the rings!!). The rest of the story is; he is sent to live with his uncle, Gwydion, who’s a wizard. He raises Lleu, but again, Lleu cannot do anything without his mother’s permission. Long story short, he and his uncle trick Arianrhod into giving Lleu permission to do various things through magic.

There’s more to the story than that ofc. If you’re interested, the folklore is part of the ‘Mabinogi’.

Some extras too:

‘Gwydion’ vaguely translates to be a word adjacent to ‘bloody’, or at least sounds it - ‘Gwaed’, ‘Gwaedllyd’.

‘Lleu’ means moon.

‘Arian’ in ‘Arianrhod’ means silver.

At the end of S4 and into S5, we know that the slayer peace treaty is fragile, Malik and Erin have left, Vlad’s life has just been flipped. We also see that Vlad’s relationship to blood in S4 changes as he gives into cravings. Him going travelling and running away from his problems (in true Dracula fashion) is a very natural progression here.

So now he’s in Tibet, learning to be vegetarian and probably smoking weed, let’s be real. Coming off the blood is suddenly quite easy and so is becoming a vegetarian. This should have been hard. We know where Vlad’s relationship with blood has been going, as well as where Ivan’s relationship with blood went (for context). Vlad’s acting all superior about his ability to resist blood’s temptation, where in reality, I think its actually the first signs of his vampire side beginning to diminish.

Vlad being a vegetarian in S5 makes perfect sense. Because of his humanity, he isn’t craving blood. It’s easy for him, but he doesn’t know that yet so he’s getting an ego boost off it.

HOWEVER, after his 18th birthday, I think Vlad would stop being a vegetarian pretty quickly as his vampirism comes back. If not by choice then out of necessity. He would be exhausted from going even a day without some form of meat. I think he would also come off soy blood eventually, but with much more back and forth struggle.