#yeah ranting

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Just keep it PG-13, no erotica, no heavy gore/body horror! Vampires have always endured because they adapt to the times. So should your story. Your vampire might be:

Ancient or newly turned

Monstrous or sympathetic

Bound by rules or breaking every single one

Feeding on blood… or something else entirely (if not blood, however, give us a solid reason for the departure!)

We welcome all vampire traditions, tones, and styles. Classic, modern, folkloric, experimental. What we ask is this:
 Bring us something that feels alive (undead!). To keep this anthology fresh and meaningful, every story must include at least one of the following elements:

A meaningful cost of immortality

A twist or inversion of a known vampire rule

A moral dilemma connected to survival, hunger, or power

A legacy, lineage, or inheritance element

A moment of invitation, permission, or crossing a boundary

A unique or non-traditional method of feeding

All of these fit the requirement of a Haunting vampire. Your interpretation is yours to craft. Please stray from a story filled with obvious tropes. It's not an automatic rejection to have a head-of-a-lineage vampire living in a castle on a hill with succubus girlfriends and a handsome protagonist under a delirious spell... but we ask that our writers think outside the box.

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You can see by the final bit of the guidelines that Dracula would be disqualified. Sure they say it's not an automatic rejection but look at the wording. The disrespect.

It also confuses me on what 'heavy' gore is but the body horror as well. Because a lot of vampire tales involve the initial death and rebirth and that can be gross but is it body horror? I don't know.

The last list and final bit is what's getting me. What's giving me the same garbage so many of these horror submission guidelines do anymore.

"You have to be fresh and new but also still be about the thing, it has to be the thing, recognizably the thing but completely different from everyone else's version and especially the classics that made the thing."

What do they want?

Vampire coffeeshop? Another little vampire book? Mister sweet old man across the hall who never seems to sleep or leave his house and always has a mustache like he just drank some juice? The fuck do you want from me?

Because I'll be honest, half the time these places are asking for vampire stories what they really want are ghosts. They want ghosts. But they want sexy ghosts, tragic ghosts, ghosts that can touch you but not like that, no never like that (only Dan Aykroyd gets away with that).

'Adapt to the times' but also we welcome all traditions, tones and styles. Except no tropes from the classics.

also i feel really vindicated by the poem i wrote and i actually ended up liking the version in english more than the italian one. which is… well… i do think my english writing is a little bit too pop compared to my italian poetry. but i am experimenting and trying to write more. also yes i am currently spilling my poetry beans here on tumblr because… it’s basically thee place to talk about these things?

i have seriously picked up poetry again in 2023 (yay for me) and you know the basic process of catharsis and/or healing through art? yeah that. i think i’ve always been chasing the opposite, that is either complete alienation from my feelings and myself or validation of my pain. i don’t want to validate my pain anymore. i’ve been thinking about that mitski quote about how so not radical hurting yourself is, but we end up thinking it is during the pivotal years of our development.

on a separate note: treating the body as something transient. the disconnect i felt towards my body during adolescence and early adulthood is unparalleled lmao… like only recently i have begun realizing our bodies bear the signs not only of time but also life. scars. discoloration. extenuata vestigia veteris poenae so to speak. and most of it irreversibly. which is why getting a tattoo is such a daunting idea to me but okay.

could i make an effort to make a more serious and better articulated post? yes but where’s the fun in that

i have written several poems in february/march that dealt with my experience with this one guy in germany which is a series i would like to expand on. i mean, i’m mentioning the guy because he was the trigger for a series of thematic reflections, mostly about merit and what being deserved means. there’s a seasonal theme going on also - the poems i’ve written in germany rely heavily on winter imagery, on the ever-going contrast between two opposite viewpoints on winter: forgetting benevolently and lack of forgiveness. and then there’s a poem i’ve written in the summer with the same trigger and i would love to expand on that. also the seasonal summer theme.

then there’s some other poems about anxiety and adjacent themes like. i don’t know. men. and entrails. and i would love to do some stuff about them. also religious poems i would need to read more for :)

Kudos to them for empowering women's rights even if it is just a game.

So, yesterday I was fucking sick. Like puking and all those sick things, and right now I feel pretty terrible, so this morning I called the police station (where I'm doing community service) and told them I couldn't come in because I was sick and one of the officers got a serious attitude with me because I've missed like, four days in the past month.

But I didn't give her any sass because I'd rather not get hell from the Lorena PD.