This is for Me

The villain smiled and - well. She was stunning. The hero felt like they could stare at the villain for hours, or possibly they wanted to be her. Every conversation they’d ever had left the hero electrified, but this was the first time the two of them had met face to face. 

“Come down to me,” the villain said. Her eyes were radiant, piercing straight through the hero’s skin. She held out a hand. Her voice - oh that voice - it curled silken around the hero’s limbs. It made something in them shiver. It didn’t particularly make them want to move closer.

The hero raised their brows. “What, so you can kill me? How dumb do you think I am? I think I’m better up here out of your reach, thanks.”

The villain blinked. The power in her voice grew. “It would feel good. A release…”

“Lol.” 

The villain scowled at that. Then, at peak frustration, realisation crossed her face. Her head tilted. The power returned full force. 

“Don’t you want to be normal?” 

The hero froze. “Nah.” They kept their voice as light as possible. “I’ll pass.” They weren’t sure if the want, the shame, or the fury burned through them with greater strength. Because that…

“Even if it means you are alone? I know you are lonely. I can see it in your head. You have friends, of course, sometimes you even forget you are lonely, but…that person who has your heart would love you, wouldn’t they? If you were different. What was it that they said to you…?”

“Shut up. I don’t need to be different. Everyone feels like that about something, everyone thinks someone else has it easier. It’s not true.”

“So defensive.” It came out a purr. “Do you convince yourself, darling, if you say it loud enough?”

“Shut. Up.” The hero realised they’d moved closer, hand curled in a fist. They forced themselves to stop on the edge of the precipice, however much they wanted to come closer still and punch. The villain had the advantage in close combat, and that was a long way to fall besides. It would idiotic of them. They still wanted to, just to smack that gloating smile aside. The hero’s throat locked tight. 

Desire was not the only way to draw someone close, nor kill them.

The hero drew in a steadying breath. They were content with their life in a lot of ways, they had people they loved and people who loved them. They knew it didn’t matter. They knew other people didn’t necessarily have it any better or any easier they just - 

“We are rare specimens, you and I,” the villain said. “We look around and there is no like us. I could make anyone fall for me and so they cannot truly love me.” Hunger wove through her words like a calling card. “And you…you want so badly be to be enough. To be loved. To be capable of love.” 

“I am loved. I am more than capable of love, as if that’s what bloody matters anyway. I’d be perfectly fine even if I didn’t want love. It’s not the only thing in the world. And, by the way, fuck you, I am most certainly enough. Get out of my head.” 

It had been funny, at first, watching the villain’s frustration grow as her usual tricks didn’t work. Now…it didn’t feel so funny now. Sirens, in the old tales, were not merely creatures of beauty. They had knowledge too. The kind of knowledge that few lived long enough to hear, the kind of song that could devastate and shape worlds. It wasn’t just a pretty face. 

And want - attraction - was so many things, tangled, for that voice to catch its hooks on. The hero should have been prepared for this, even if the siren hadn’t been.

The siren’s smile dropped. They both glared at each other, hearts pounding.

“Well, then,” the siren said. “I suppose I’ll just have to come to you then. Rip your heart out the old fashioned away.” 

On that note…the hero bolted.

A/N: So I don’t normally A/N my writing, I prefer people make their own conclusions and draw their own thoughts on my work. I’d put this in the tags if tags were not being weird. So. Under the cut. #Sorry not sorry.

Hey, I’d really appreciate if you’d tag this as asexual since as an allosexual aromantic I would like to filter asexual content so I can decide if I feel comfortable seeing it. No hate towards asexuals I promise! It’s just that quite a bit of asexual content I see is very arophobic. Thanks so much!

I thought I was going to let this go, because I don’t want to start to drama and tumblr can have a disturbing habit of dogpiling that I don’t want to perpetuate…but the more I thought about it I just don’t want to let this go. 

I also don’t want to privately message you about it, because you decided to take this to a public forum on my post where everyone has to read your words, so now we’re going to talk about it.

Please note that I am not basing this on your one reply to my post detailed above - I looked into why you might feel this way and noted this on your profile:

“Not all aro’s are ace, just like not all ace’s are aro. We aro’s already deal with so much erasure and hatred and we need solidarity from the ace community instead of hatred toward aro’s who aren’t also ace. The ace community is only recently gaining visibility and support from the rest of the LGBTQIA+ community. Don’t you remember when you were as erased as we are now? I’m not asking for a whole lot here. I’m simply asking people to tag asexual content as such.”

Okay. Do you not see the irony here? No? Let’s unpack. 

In short: your response to my post literally asks asexual people to enable you to erase them, because you find us uncomfortable. You say it is because you do not want aromantic experiences to be erased but you are explicitly coding my identity as a trigger warning and asking it to be treated as such. 

There are two key things here. 

1) You are asking for a lot.  It is not the responsibility of asexual people to make ourselves invisible for you. The mere existence of our identity does not deserve to be a trigger warning. You are responsible for your own consumption of content on the internet. You can ask for your needs to be met, but you don’t get to say that erasing ourselves for you is nothing. That is not and never will be your decision.

2) You went out of your way to post on a post made explicitly about asexuality, by an asexual person, about asexual representation in particular…to tell us that our experience, our existence, is something that should be filtered out and sanitised for you. Maybe you don’t mean that as hate, but it is not okay, and frankly reads rather a lot like ‘no offense, but can you go back to the closet. I don’t hate you, you just make me uncomfortable by virtue of existing.’ 

And that sounds horribly familiar in a way I feel like you should understand. 

I believe you when you say you don’t mean any hate towards asexual people, but the implications of your words were hateful, and reading your reply felt like getting punched in the throat. 

But let’s look some more at the post which you so object to. 

It is very clear from the initial ask at the top of this post that this story/post is going to be dealing with asexuality and an asexual protagonist. Therefore, regardless of the issue of how it is tagged in my original post or any reblogged versions of my post, there is no version of it where the asexuality is going to sneak up on you. It is not hidden. This means that on the most basic level the post does allow you to decide whether to read it or not based solely on the fact it includes asexual content, and therefore you already have control of your experience and the ability and choice to not engage. 

You cannot pretend you didn’t know it was about asexuality because you posted specifically about the fact it was about asexuality.

Therefore, you could have simply skipped and that would have been fine. You do you. Stay safe. 

However, you didn’t do that. 

Which means this is not about your boundaries anymore, it is about you wanting us to stop being there entirely. It is you wanting to erase us even if you are not fully conscious of that. It is you being spectacularly disrespectful to asexual people in the way that you want to avoid for yourself. 

I don’t get to filter you out when you literally come onto my post and force me to get a notification about how much my existence makes you uncomfortable, and I’m not entirely convinced you paused to think or care if your response and requests made me or any asexual seeing it comfortable or not. 

Did you read the story? I’m guessing you didn’t before you told us to be more invisible. 

This post is about how many people try and reduce asexual needs, desires and representation to a joke. It is, despite the fantasy setting, me navigating my personal experiences with my identity that I do not see talked about or reflected a lot. It is me trying not to feel alone. Me trying not to feel invisible and erased. Me trying not to feel like everything I want in my life is wrong. Me still trying to feel like what I am is okay years after coming out, because people like you consistently remind me in quiet little ways that what I am is not ‘normal’ and not accepted in the way that other people get to be. And some days I can breathe past that and some days I can’t and I shouldn’t have to.

To put it bluntly, this post was not made for you. This was our safe space.

Finally, as the added kicker to all of this, if you had bothered to read the story before posting on it, you would have noted that my story explicitly states that regardless of if the romantic asexual protagonist wants love or not…that’s not what’s important. It wouldn’t be wrong even if they didn’t want that. E.g, if they were aromantic, they would still be just as worthy of respect, and they would still be enough.

I’m not aro, so maybe I’m misunderstanding or lacking some deeper nuance, but last I checked I didn’t think that was arophobic. I remember specifically thinking about aro people actually when I was writing that post and thinking ‘hey, I don’t want to act like aro people don’t exist and that romantic love is the end all of end alls because it is not’. 

I didn’t want anyone to feel the way I feel now. The way that you made me feel. 

A coven of Vampires have cultivated and kept alive a town of people for several generations.

Providing them with provisions and anything they need to survive. The healthiest of foods and the cleanest water.

They are taught, and educated and worked in the ways of all forms of Art, never having to work for life, just do what make them happy.

They are Isolated from the outside world, never getting visitors. Just lived, worked, married, had children, age.

But they never grow old.

death is not allowed in this town. when one is sick or injured, the Hospital heals them with “a special potion” which is just Vampire blood that has Healing Properties. Everyone lives no matter what.

Until they vanish.

The Vanished people of the town are celebrated, they are remembered, the remaining people mourn and move on.

It was just their way of life. After generations of it happening, they knew no different way of living.

The Vanished, vanish on Mile Stone Years. 15, 20, 30, thirty being the most common age, but on the rare occasion, sometimes children will vanish, and on even rarer occasions, the Elderly will vanish.

No one tries to stop the vanishings, those who tried in the past Vanish along side the chosen. They weren’t allowed to try and stop them from leaving.

There is no guarantee when, no one knows, there is no warning. A family will just wake one morning and someone will be gone. As if they wandered off in the middle of the night.

Lured away by the Vampire’s hypnosis.

It is in the Hypnotized State that the Human’s remain.

Having been cared for, healthy and no need to stress or worry about their life. Taken at the appropriate age. Conditioned to live their life, with no knowledge of the outside world to question the conditions in which they live.

The Vampire Coven care for these Humans the way they do, to be sold to other vampires. Expensive, healthy, happy, unstressed, Fresh from the source, human blood. Hypnotized to not feel pain or know what is happening to them, they are sold to be enjoyed by any Vampire that can afford them.

Essentially, its a Winery for Vampires. Humans aged the right amount of time for different flavors of blood. 

The Waiting list for them is Centuries long, any Vampire would be Lucky to have a taste of these Prime Human’s Blood.

Some vampires have tried to find the city, and those lucky enough to find it are quickly killed and made an example of to the vampire community.

There is a Werewolf pack that guards the borders of this Winery Town. Protecting them from sneaky Thieves and occasionally scaring off a wandering human who gets too close.

The Werewolves are a family that are indebted to the Vampire Coven. must do their bidding. they are also paid, which has become their incentive more so than the debt that is owed, either way, it works out for everyone.

I wonder how large a pool the vampires would need to insure genetic diversity through the years? Esp if its given that people do age beyond their prime child bearing years. Maybe with complete control over the culture of the group, the vampires could decide which humans could have children together. Or maybe if "virginity" was a blood trait that was prised then the hidden culture could be entirely celibate and the vampires would just import babies from elsewhere.

Although, if noone is dying of natural causes, I think they would all need to be eaten at some point. Maybe 50% are taken before they're 45, and noone really stays past 75. (What a bizare world that would be! Babies just appear, and eventually just vanish again). Thiugh maybe you would want verified humans to live to be crazy old, then the vampires that interact directly with the population wouldnt be singled out as strange.

Population size would be difficult to decide, and different ones would be more facorable in different story settings. 2-300 humans would be easier to control, and would have a tighter knit community with less outliers. But the diversity problem deffinalty comes into play with that small a group. (This would probably work in a post-apocalyptic story, where the vampires scour the ruined earth for people and bring them back, like cattle).

A group of several thousand people would be harder to unify. Though it would be a good setting for a YA fantasy where a plucky young heroine escapes and/or rebels against the man to save her fellow peoples.

Commissions for Coffee ☕️: Lucy and Mina

Mina: 

Jonathan: 

Lucy: 

Arthur: 

Jack: 

Quincey: 

Van Helsing:

Dracula: 

Renfield:

Swales: 

Also Jonathan/Mina:

To writers who say

I, a professional writer, say

Writing isn’t hard.  You know what’s hard?

I’ve done all the jobs above, except firefighting and construction (though I did work as a housepainter).

Fuck you and your pretentious posing.  Writing is sitting on your ass and thinking.  It takes concentration, and yes, it can be exhausting and frustrating.

But writing ain’t fucking hard work.  You don’t break bones, get burned, have customers spit at you, deal with piss on the carpet and phone numbers written in shit on the walls, yellow jackets, drunks, paranoid schizophrenics who attack you because they think you’re Hitler, and customers who dump the pile of clothes you just folded on the floor right in front of you and laugh at you.

And don’t say, “Oh that happens because I’m a parent.”  Fuck you.

Stop posturing as a Serious Writer by complaining how writing is like opening a vein and using your blood for ink.

Writing should be a joy to you.  The process of creation should fill you with happiness, even when it’s not going as well as you want it to.  Revision should be something you look forward to.  You may get mad, want to cry, hate your characters, but you should enjoy even that.

If you don’t feel this way when you write,

Inspired by a conversation in the Discord server wherein somebody suggested that vampires are affiliated with every fear/entity. They were specifically talking about the vampires in the show, but I decided to take it a step further and find aspects of vampire lore from a bunch of different sources that tie-in to one of the entities.

The Eye

Mind reading, especially when the act of mind-reading is tied to the act of biting/feeding 

e.g. the Pact Arcanum series

The Spiral

The way being preyed on over a long time can make you feel weak and confused with no obvious cause

Seeing things at night and not knowing whether they were dreams or real 

e.g. Carmilla

The Lonely

Staying young while all of your loved ones grow old and die 

Not being able to connect to people because your experience of the world is so different or because you would hurt them

e.g. Twilight

The End

Death, immortality, seems straightforward

The Stranger 

Nonhuman thing pretending to be human, often looks just slightly wrong

Loved ones being replaced by vampires wearing their bodies

e.g. Dracula

The Desolation

Folklore vampires often targeted families and communities, so people would lose many or all of their loved ones in quick succession, 

some jerk vampires in fiction are fond of torturing humans for fun 

e.g. Anita Blake: Vampire Hunter

Stories that draw attention to the fact that vampires can endure extreme injuries and pain for an arbitrarily long time due to immortality 

e.g. True Blood

The Slaughter

Jerk vampires just randomly killing humans for fun 

e.g. Seraph of the End

The Vast

The feeling of how short a human life is compared to the vastness of time, works best with vampires who are thousands of years old who have watched empires rise and fall 

e.g. The Vampire Chronicles

The Buried

Many new vampires wake up buried in their coffins, having been dead for a bit before transforming (though they generally manage to get out)

All the vampires in European folklore who are staked or otherwise trapped in their coffins but still “alive” 

Modern stories where vampires are buried alive as punishment by other vampires 

e.g. Being Human

The Dark

They’re nocturnal, they lurk in shadows. Vampires are a pretty classic “thing that goes bump in the night”

The Corruption

Arguably the closest original affiliation of vampires, since a lot of vampire folklore seems to be based on explaining the symptoms and spread of disease

Every story where people can be infected with vampirism against their will

The Web

Compulsion, ranges from preventing victims from screaming and running to straight-up controlling people’s actions or thoughts, but the most web-like is the post-hypnotic suggestion sort of thing where victims don’t know they’re being compelled 

e.g. Vampire Diaries

Immortal vampires exerting their influence over the course of generations, gradually shaping the world to their desires by manipulating human societies 

e.g. Vampire: The Masquerade

Needing an invitation to enter a home and so tricking/manipulating people into inviting them in

The Flesh

Humans being like cattle to vampires, valuable only as food, and potentially even being farmed and harvested for their blood 

e.g. Daybreakers

The Hunt

Vampires preying on humans 

Vampire hunters

The Extinction 

Stories where all humans will eventually become vampires, particularly when vampires don’t remember or care about their human existence 

e.g. I Am Legend (which obviously yes is about disease but it’s more specifically about the end of humanity)

Zombies? Sounds like fun, especially for people who want to be zombies. 10/10.

Vampires? Who doesn’t like vampires at least a little bit, come on they’re cool and drink blood and they are a blast to talk to.

Androids/AI taking over? Good for them, they deserve it! They’re far superior to humans anyway. 

WW3/Bombing ourselves out of existence? Well gee, we kind of deserve it for letting things reach this point again. We should’ve learned better.

Solar flares? It’s a natural occurrence that can’t be stopped, just like if a meteor comes and kills us all like the dinosaurs. It’ll likely happen so fast you won’t even realize it anyway. 

Particularly bad Natural Disasters/Climate Change? Wowie we deserve this one too. You know, with the whole pillaging the planet and all. 

We consume too many resources, the planet can’t handle it anymore, and everyone who can’t leave the planet dies off? Well that’s shitty, but kind of humanity’s fault. 

Animals become sentient and take over? I would actually love for this to happen, it sounds like fun and I would much rather be controlled by my pets than by Jimmy down the street because he thinks that helping other people is a bad thing. 

A mass extinction event kills off humanity? Good. It’s a natural occurrence, and if it’s our time then let’s gO.

A disease takes us all out? Good for that little fella, you’ve evolved to become so powerful!

Mutants evolve from humans and completely dominate the rest of us? Good for you! That’s how evolution works. 

Someone brings back dinosaurs and we’re stupid enough to not properly handle them? Seems like fun, I want to be eaten by a prehistoric whale. 

Some religion got it right and judgement day arrives? It didn’t come fast enough. Pick up the pace guys I’ve been falling behind enacting everyone’s karma. 

Aliens? Aliens. Who doesn’t love aliens. Come fuck humanity up, guys.

…you do realize the response is original content? As in I wrote and came up with it? Dialogue, descriptions, etc? That’s this funny thing called original creativity which deserves to be credited to the person who wrote it. You might have heard of this if you didn’t just copy paste what other people came up with.

Them writing their own thing is a very different thing to them using what I have come up with and my FAQs have always reflected that. If you don’t understand that I honestly don’t know what to say to you. I suppose you think an artist’s commission is also not their original artwork if someone else gave them a brief of drawing a horse.