#vampire meta

I've just always been fascinated by that tie between the physical and the metaphysical in her lore-building; the fact that it is so strongly emotionally rooted but also changes the literal alchemy of the recipient's blood when they drink from someone stronger.

And I just think it's really interesting that Louis de Pointe du Lac, who is often interpreted in fanon as the most strictly asexual and celibate out of the main cast of characters, is simultaneously praised for his "virginity" that keeps him closer to his humanity, while also being judged and ostracized for his refusal to share blood with others. Like, I think about David's description of the events with Maharet and how she had "pressed him in the extreme" to accept her blood, and after his refusal, she had deemed him "no longer one of us."

NO LONGER ONE OF US!!!!!

idk what else I have to say on this subject, I just find it really interesting to frame sex/intimacy in this light of having a physical and irreversible transformational power because I think that's an aspect that is missing from a lot of the conversations we have these days around sexuality and i just. i find it so wild that Louis is constantly set up as this FUCKING FREAK REJECT for being more discerning about whose blood he accepts, meanwhile the entire time Louis is like. constantly reminding others that the physical repercussions of blood drinking are irreversible and I am not willing to be changed!!

(Many movies from the silent film era are considered lost media, either going up in flames due to their volatile film stock, or people not bothering to preserve them.)

Early movies are a pretty unique art form in that so many of them are considered completely lost, with the only remains being studio stills and promotions. Some are not documented at all.

Imagine this specific vampiric agony, remembering the particular emotions an exquisitely acted movie scene invoked with you, how it said something about life and love, that you don’t have the artistic skills to expresss to someone else.

You desperately want someone else to understand, because that movie has become a part of yourself now (if we are on this site, we can relate to having media be foundational to the formation of our self.)

You try to explain it, but they don’t understand, because you don’t have the words. It must have been experienced. But it’s impossible for them to do so.

(You’re just an impression of an impression).

Movie Feyd is the older kind.

Pre Anne Rice really.

Like the 1922 Nosferatu; grey skinned, clawed hands, bat eared with carnivore teeth.

Nosferatu evolved from thousands of years of stories of the dead rising from the grave. Those “vampires” were not sexy; they’re disgusting, they’re terrifying, they’re rotting corpses holding onto life by cannibalism.

In Bulgaria it was disabled people whose corpses had stakes put in them on suspicion of vampirism.

The fear was that a familiar, ostracised face would return as something other than human.

In the movies Feyd is so pallid he might as well be grey. He paints his teeth black to give him a gaping, black maw mouth while he kills artificially weakened slaves and Feyda-kin

Movie Feyd looks very human at the same time distinctly alien; like with vampires we can recognise him but still feel the inhumanity like with older popular media vampire portrayals.

In the movie, Paul’s killing the straight up monster.

Yes I know and appreciate that Austin acted his butt off but movie Feyd kills his slaves to feed his cannibal concubines. They are meat to him nothing more.

Now book Feyd is the more modern vampire.

He’s the fear, made famous by Lucy in Dracula, of something predatory and utterly inhuman wearing the face of a loved one.

He kills his sex slaves yes, on the Baron, his abuser’s orders.

They are more human, though subhuman; necessary prey in a cycle he’s tried to break ala the guilty conscience of the Cullens in twilight.

In the books, he looks a lot like Paul; a Harkonnen by “my hands, the set of my bones.“

He’s his mirror, a reflection of Paul but crueler, hungrier, still cannibalistic when they meet.

Then he dies.

When an artery is punctured, it’s under a lot of pressure, I don’t wanna be overly descriptive but words such as splatter and torrent may be used.

when a vein is punctured, a small trickle comes out. This most likely what would come from a scrape or accident with a cheese grater.

Arterial blood is also much lighter and les viscous. Venous blood is darker and thicker.

So: venous wounds may clot in seconds-minutes, while arterial punctures may clot in minutes-hours (very dependent on type of injury, not absolute timeframes)

Now the most important part:

veins can form and reform, diverge, reconnect, die, and be created whenever. If a vein is repeatedly damaged, the body might choose to form a new one and discard the old one. If someone gained weight, the new tissue would grow more veins. They are replaceable. That’s the blue lines just below the skin, right in some easily damaged spots

Arteries cannot regrow(as well). Being bigger than veins, under higher pressure, having less viscous blood, all means that arterial injuries are harder to heal and that arteries are more difficult to grow. Arteries are deep, protected by tissues and sometimes behind bones.

So when Midnight Mass presents the Angel as the source of vampirism and vampires as the newly rises covenant, that should fall apart. Every one of those assumptions, the layers of lore around vampires should fall apart. If the traits that make these 'creatures of the night' are right with the Risen Christ then the pain from things pure and holy shouldn't exist either. And by extension, if the metaphors of the Bible are to be made literal in this way, other taboos too should fall away. Communion should either be debased the way cannibalism is, or cannibalism exalted too. All human interaction should become militaristic and that only. The world divided along the lines of sheep and shepherds, with both completely absolved from responsibility.

And yet it's not. Even in the show it's not. Father John's hands bleed where he holds his cross and rosary. Everyone who had Turned burns away in the light. Children, considered gifts from God and yet unborn and so they can't have original sin, are miscarried when the blood of the Angel is ingested. And the Angel itself, glorious for the violence it can do and the aggression it shows to the natural order.

Essentially, any and all of what a vampire gets from a human they can get from another vampire ONLY if that vampire has JUST fed. So, like, let's say Auri wants to heal Erich with blood. If they killed someone and drained them, then immediately gave Erich that blood from their own wrist, it would work. But within two hours or so all the life in it is gone, taken into themself to keep them immortal, and it would no longer work.