Laurasauras

Sewing machines are operated by *people*. Knitting machines are operated by *people*. Yes lots of the process is automated but you cannot tell a machine "make me a t-shirt" or "make me a knit cardigan".

Guess what

IF we were to be perfectly rigorous and sincere about vampires, the only interpretation that rings true to me - in the sense of, what would drive people from #myRegion to be putting wooden stakes into corpses and such - is that of the spiteful and ancient paterfamilias, so petty and so dedicates to maintaining his situational power within the family that he evades death itself, and so stubborn in his pitiless rein that he literally turns his victims inhuman too; some are meals, some are subordinate heads of the family, subservient patriarchs and matriarchs who also do their fair share of biting

“No age gap??!?!?”

“And no non-con elements”

“NO NON CON?”

“And no coercion or otherwise manipulative behaviors”

“Joe they want a vampire with NOTHING”

They don't have a heartbeat, they often don't even breathe, they're genuinely inhuman

They can't go out in the daylight

They can't share meals with people

They are physically repelled by representations of religion (more significant before Nietzsche, but still important)

They don't show up in mirrors or photographs, they have no way of knowing who they are, they're cut off from seeing who they've become since they've been changed

And they kill people to maintain this facsimile of living, which isn't even living. They steal the blood, the life essence of people, so they can continue being not human

When you make them drink animal blood, as is done in Twilight and sometimes Buffy, they are still participating in hunting in a way that is distinctly inhuman. They're still biting into an alive creature and draining it of life. Often the writer will have them feed on rats just to highlight how desperate this need is and how distinct it is from our human way of eating

When you make them drink from blood banks, also done in Buffy and often in media that's attempting to soften the vampire mythos, they steal other people's opportunities to be saved

They've been an analogy for sexual assault since the first portrayals of them, not only because of the intimacy of biting someone's neck, but also because they often are able to hypnotise or compel their victims. They lure them in. They're predators

You can have "good" vampires, but the thing that's compelling about them is the fact that they're fighting so hard against their instincts and there's tension in the fact that they might lose that fight

If you take away all these things idk I just think you probably don't like vampires

books i read in 2026: cinder house by freya marske

Title: Are You Telling Me a Shrimp Fried This Rice?

Story: I am very proud of this little guy! I have been entranced by the various shrimp-based wooden automata made by Stoccafisso Design. I finally made the time to sit down and read his gorgeously illustrated PDF (Design and Make Your Own Automata). It doesn't have instructions for the shrimp chef automata specifically, but using the photos provided for the "Like the Wind" mechanism and the videos elsewhere of the shrimp chef I figured out the likely design and then adapted that concept from traditional woodworking to laser-cutting (and changed the things the little shrimp guy is tossing in his pan from from red and green bits to golden grains of rice). Not bad for a first try!