librowyrm

[librowyrm]

Safeway labeled their glazed donuts as "Glazed Yeast Ring" and multiple hmmmm thoughts ran through my head: They stopped trying. They told the computer to do it. Someone forgot the word doughnut.

[librowyrm]

every now and then I am reminded to my great chagrin that my mother is funnier than I am

[librowyrm]

What are your PERSONAL requirements for a vampire, as in powers, lore, etc.? Bonus: Favorite fictional vampire strictly based on lore.

There are 2 answers to this question: what I believe qualifies as a vampire in folklore ; what I want from vampires in fiction.

The first one is a whole thesis, so we're setting it aside.

In fiction, I want a few specific things from vampires. Note that I'm discussing vampires inspired by the last few centuries' western fiction.

I also don't think that these are hard requirements to write good vampire stories. This is what I want from vampire stories and "rules" which I think can be broken if the concept is compelling and well-executed.

For me, a vampire should need to drink human blood to survive. If it subsists in any way on animal blood, I want it to be nigh bed-bound, largely relying on others for care and survival.

Vampires should have to take from someone else to survive. That's part of the horror and poetry of their existence. If they decide for any reason not to take, they should still rely on someone else to survive.

I've read stories in which vampires can drink animal blood, but it is supposed to weaken them. In these stories, the weakened vampires still function with complete independence and even strength superior to humans. They're just tired, sore, weak compared to other vampires, and cranky (like the rest of us). There's no intrigue for me there.

And I don't think the story should disable vampires as a punishment. I don't think that being disabled and relying on other people is bad (I've been there).

I'm saying that the vampire should not exist without needing. The vampire should have 3 options: accept its needs and harm people to survive ; accept its needs but reject harm and ask people for blood to survive ; reject its base needs and harm and accept other forms of care to survive.

In all three scenarios, the vampire must accept that it cannot survive without relying on others (like the rest of us). Whether this is parasitic and violent, or vulnerable and communal, is up to the vampire (and, in the latter, to the people it meets).

I think vampires must also lose a part of themselves when they become vampires. This happens most commonly by dying and losing connection to life. The loss can be aging, maturing, changing. The loss can be connections to the people the vampire loves and must leave behind. I'm not hugely into sun-adverse vampires, but never being able to tolerate even a little daylight could be debilitating and interesting to explore for some vampires. There are worse, more drastic fates. In Sinners (2025), vampires lose their connection to their souls, peoples, cultures, and ancestors.

Whatever the loss, it should haunt the vampire to the point that its need to fill that void sometimes inspires action and movement. This doesn't have to be what the story is about, and sometimes the loss might just be a dull ache that the vampire can ignore for stretches of time. But it should be there.

Finally, I think vampires should be extremely long-lived (centuries, at least), if not immortal. Edit: Missed the second question in the ask! I am deeply compelled by the lore in Sinners and the metaphor of vampirism as colonialism. I don't mean Remmick is my favorite vampire character (he isn't even my favorite characters in the movie), but the lore and storytelling is some of the strongest in vampire media.

[librowyrm]

i would trust weird al with my drink at a party. granted he may put one of those capsules that expands into a sponge animal in it,

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[librowyrm]

obviously everything happening in the us is horrific but (like everything in trump's traveling carnival of government) it's mostly exceptional in now slapdash and clownish the cruelty is. let us please not forget that the EU has been paying foreign governments to torture and murder asylum seekers for years -- and australia's been doing the 'sending refugees to unaccountable offshore camps' thing for more than two decades. & like i say this not to detract from the justified fury and outrage for the situation in the usa but to urge everyone to analyse it not as some bizarre abberation but as something that fits alongside a long list of policies long pursued by the usa and other imperial core nations

[librowyrm]

Theory: Kris is shit at puzzles without the player

[librowyrm]

A childhood journal

English added by me :)

[librowyrm]

met a really racist person who was like all non-real british people should be deported and i said what makes someone real and he was like if both their families have been here since the 1700s and i said you know what. i can get behind deporting the king. and he didnt like that response.

[librowyrm]

I love microwaves. I love that I can put a raw potato inside and push a button labelled "potato" and some time later it will beep and there will be a baked potato in there.

[librowyrm]

girl helppp

[librowyrm]

The misuse of the "insult to life itself" quote from Miyazaki on AI burns my yams so bad bc the original context is being disgusted with how a characters movements are dehumanizing to disabled people specifically bc of his empathy for a disabled friend and it's such a sadly rare sentiment, this cognizance of how we casually inflict indignity upon disabled people and how he finds it disgusting, I hate seeing it obfuscated

[librowyrm]

it's crazy that you used to be able to look up specific clips from a tv show on youtube. now regardless of your search terms you get 6 unrelated promo reels from the show's official account, 6 unrelated clips of literally anything else youtube thinks you might click on, 6 unrelated promo reels from the network's official account, 6 more completely arbitrary recommendations, 6 show trailers and publicity videos of the actors by content mills called 'pop glutton' and 'comedy chunk' and finally raw gameplay footage of a mobile freemium slots game and a video essay called Liberals Can't Belive It: 10 Times Hitler Was Shockingly Woke

[librowyrm]

since mrs, ms, and mr are all descended from the latin word magister, i propose the gender neutral version should be mg, short for "mage"

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[librowyrm]

love how frequently stuff that's considered quintessentially U.S.American is actually named after european cities. jeans and denim. hotdogs (frankfurters & weiners). mother fucking HAMBURGERS

[librowyrm]

I found this youtube channel run by a pet groomer and all she posts is just. Fluffy lil sweetie pies getting groomed.