#deep ass stuff

[qwoolz]

In ever piece of media Akk is still my favourite character and i need somebody to ask me about him daily

[dukeofthomas]

"Are the Robins child soldiers" It depends. If the story is super serious and into exploring complex morality and grounded from reality's standards, then yes. If the story is lighthearted, made for children, fluff, etc., then no. If it's somewhere in the middle, it might depend.

If an author wants to write a story seriously delving into the fucked up-ness of children fighting criminals, they can, and if you don't like it, you can read something else.

If an author wants to write a fun story about villains and heroes featuring Robin in a world where that's not an issue, they can, and if you don't like it, you can read something else.

If an author wants to write a serious story but not apply IRL-logic to Robin, they can, and if you don't like it, you can read something else.

[dewwshi]

The people demand more Minlach. ( please more we are desperate and your art of them is so good 🥺🥺🥺)

🫡

my beautiful yuri... sooo critical to me that minthara 1. fell first 2. fell harder. something abt the idea of this self-avowed villain being utterly and inexplicably smitten with the sweetest nicest golden retriever girl in the world

[monstersinthecosmos]

Little Drink as edging and MURDER as orgasming is the most mindbendingly hot and truthful parallel to ever be drawn. Just. Cannot get past it

 Yes, YES!!!

Like I know I’m Marius Brained and everything but even when I’m reading TVA and in Armand’s POV I am always like, god this must have been killing Marius. 🥵

The Devil’s Minion era (once they warm up to each other) and Venice Era are really the only times in canon we get to see a prolonged courtship between a vampire and human, yeah? But the books constantly tell us about how killing & drinking is the ultimate form of intimacy. (Notice me being very very mature and not devolving into an Asexual VC dissertation LMAO pin that for later). I’m not counting Lestat & David as a prolonged courtship because David was Not Interested and they weren’t sharing blood before Lestat finally turned him, and still David’s turning is explicitly described as rape and written to be erotic. But the overlap of Venice & Devil’s Minion is too obvious to ignore and we see the way the human/vampire relationship finds ways to translate their interspecies erotic desires by sharing sex acts (for the human) and blood (for the vampire).

STILL! 

The Little Drink isn’t all they need! Like they’re not just taking a little sip and fucking off for the night — Thorne describes it as being a bee going from flower to flower! Drinking from many many people! And the books tell us that it’s not ONLY the blood itself — it’s the murdering that’s the truly intimate and most special act!!!!! 

So anyway just.

Taking little sips for years and years ! The blue balls, my god. And finally getting to take him all the way!!!!!!! God. 🥵💦

Especially like reading B&G and knowing that Armand was like, Marius’s 3rd choice rebound during that time period LMAO. He wanted Botticelli and had to leave Florence to not kill him! He wanted Bianca and had to remove himself from her social circle to not kill her!!! 

This is my favorite Marius quote in VC, when he’s feeling like he’s going to murder Bianca — 

For a moment, I thought my powerful self-control would be lost. I would embrace her, whether or not she would have it, and take her rapidly by force from the very middle of her warm and safe rooms to the cold and fatal domain of my soul.

He finds Armand because he’s trying to like ethically source a fledgling (great job buddy that’s the worst anyone has ever done it) by choosing someone who’s on borrowed time, anyway! Blank slate that he can groom for vampirism!!!!!! 

I was just talking to @apoptoses today about how the concept of ���this sounded cool until I actually tried it” comes up a bunch in VC — we were talking about Daniel romanticizing murder until he actually had to do it LOL — but same for Marius thinking he can just mold a trafficked boy to be a good vampire. So it’s not just like, Marius having a relationship with him and taking little sips as a fucking aperitif for The Act but like, he almost immediately changes his mind and doesn’t want to do it !!! He’s willing to deny himself !!! 

Gosh where’s that other thing he says in TVA…

“I’m coarsened by human blood. It's always the fact. Only in starvation do I find an ethereal purity.” "Ah, and you turn me from penance at every juncture," I said, "towards the senses, towards pleasure."

Just, oof. Especially for Marius who, from what we can tell, is a little more into humans than most of the cast? Like he’s someone that craves social connection and wants to be around them all the time. Even when he was alive and he was traveling to meet and study people in taverns. So I think there’s just a lot wrapped up in this ! 

I shared this a couple weeks ago but I wanna share it again because I think it will make everyone understand VC better and we’ll all write better fanfics for it LMAO it’s based on Hellraiser but it's the topic of eroticism in religious penance !!!!! Very excellent. 

But the eroticism of suffering! Of denial! Inside the universe of Written By Crazy Catholic Lady VC we also have to talk about how eroticism is the kill & the blood and how abstinence is akin to starvation - how it’s something actually painful.

Anyway I’m gonna leave it here I think because I’ll talk all day but I was poking through TVA and B&G for some quotes about this and I’m just !!!!!!

Marius on Armand:

I had never experienced such pure intimacy with a mortal, except with those I meant to kill. It gave me chills to have my arms around this boy, to press my lips to his cheeks and chin, his forehead, his tender closed eyes. Yes, the blood thirst rose, but I knew so well how to control it. I filled my nostrils with the smell of his youthful flesh.

"He is irresistible, but what am I to do?

Armand on Marius: 

"Amadeo," he said, his lips on my throat as they'd come a thousand times, only this time there came a sting, sharp, swift and gone. A thread stitched into my heart was jerked all of a sudden. I had become the thing between my legs, and was nothing but that. His mouth nestled against me, and again that thread snapped and again. I saw him staring, beastlike, from his chair, as if some ravener had come into him and banished all his civilized faculties and left him thus, hungry, with glazed eyes and reddening mouth, the glittering blood finding its myriad little paths over the silky margin of his lips. He rose, a drugged thing, and came towards me with a rhythm of movements that was alien and struck the coldest terror in my heart. His fingers flashed, closed, beckoned. I ran to him. He lifted me in both hands, clutching my arms ever so gently, and tucked his face against my neck. From the soles of my feet up my back through my arms and my neck and scalp, I felt it.

"Master, Master, Master, I love you." "Yes, well, that's not so unusual," he whispered. He didn't stop his kissing. He lapped at the blood. I writhed under the weight of his hand on my backside. "But the question is, Amadeo, why do I love you? Why? Why did I have to go into that stinking brothel and look upon you? I am strong by nature ... whatever my nature ..." He greedily kissed a large bruise on my thigh. I could feel his sucking at it, and then the tongue lapping it, eating the blood, and then his blood coming down into it.

And this from TVA when he finally does it:

He bent his lips. A sense of dreadful awesome finality swept over me. "You will die now to be with me in life eternal," he whispered in my ear. "Never for a moment must you really fear. I will hold your heart safe in my hands." His teeth cut into me, deeply, cruelly with the precision of twin daggers, and I heard my heart thud in my ears. My very bowels contracted, and my stomach was knotted in pain. Yet a savage pleasure swept through all my veins, a pleasure which coursed towards the wounds in my neck. I could feel my blood rush towards my Master, towards his thirst and my inevitable death. Even my hands were transfixed with vibrant sensation. Indeed, I seemed suddenly to be but a puppet map of circuitry, all of it aglow, as with a low, obvious and deliberate sound, my Master drank my life's blood. The sound of his heart, slow, steady, a deep reverberating pounding, filled my ears. The pain in my intestines was alchemized to a soft sheer rapture; my body lost all weight, all knowledge of itself in space. The throb of his heart was within me. My hands felt the long satin locks of his hair, but I did not hold to them. I floated, supported only by the insistent heartbeat and thrilling current of all my swiftly flowing blood. "I die now," I whispered. This ecstasy could not endure.

(What’s also funny is that the turning from Marius’s POV is so much about Armand’s religious ecstasy and revelations - thanks Catholic Lady but also that’s whole eroticism-mysticism thing again. Also the way that Marius treats it like a wedding so. Jsdkgla.)

I’m going to be so fucking honest with you, I was gonna pull a bunch of quotes and I think there were some more I was gonna look up but I got a little too squirmy reading these ones 🥵🥵🥵🥵 dhjkadslg I THINK I’VE MADE MY POINT.

[honeyteastar]

blue pricing eyes and void eyes moment <3

[demodraws0606]

Hello. I'm not moving on from how fucking sus Whit was in this entire trial

Ok I'm very much sick and tired /pos of Whit always ending up being fucking sus. Because I just realized four things that makes me glare at Whit in the context of this entire trial.

-Whit was the most addament that the secrets didn't actually matter (outside of his weird call out of Levi). In fact when the secrets stop being a subject he complains about it.

-Both of the things Whit was weirdly stingy about (The letter and David's secret) were both things that didn't actually matter that much in the trial. Without either of the information there would still be the decisive evidence of the tape and rubber band being used for the murder which would've always lead to Ace being proven as the culprit. David's secret only ended up causing the cast to believe he did it and the note ended up making people get the time of death wrong.

-Whit actually ends up giving the biggest push in the trial that would lead to Ace being discovered as the culprit which is him helping Teruko discover how the murder mechanism needed to have worked. This is the one time where he's weirdly extremely useful and vocal in the trial.

(I'm fucking glaring at you mf)

-Him fucking saying this shit

I will not take "oh you're just overthinking it, it's not that suspicious" anymore, this motherfucker makes me want to chew rocks.

[vaguely-concerned]

I feel that during the first coffee date walk through the market, rye has a fraction of a millisecond's kneejerk trauma freakout of '...wait. wait. am I really catching feelings for a rich boy again. with how that went down last time. am I truly that stupid' (once derogatorily referred to quite openly at a party as 'young master anaxas' pet mortalitasi' to which the young master anaxas only grinned and shrugged and STILL you don't break up with his smug controlling ass for good for six more months because you have a desperate bottomless yearning pit where your self respect should go, twice shy lol). and then he actually looks at lucanis standing next to him getting harding spearmint to help with bad dreams and generally being so quietly thoughtful and sweet through the prosaic yet necessary medium of grocery shopping it makes me feel a little unwell to truly contemplate. and rye is like '*the softest fondest eyes anyone has ever turned on anything* ...you know what. I suspect we don't have to worry about that repeating, I think we're probably safe. I am comfortable being this level of stupid. (slowly dawning marital intent even at this stage)'.

(part of the reason rye buys NONE of illario's bullshit at all right from the beginning is that he's basically vaccinated against this exact type of dude after that relationship lol. charming suave guy who in the beginning pays you a lot of lavish attention and takes pains to make you feel special every time you're in a room with him -- but shallowly and mostly, it slowly dawns on you, when there's something he wants from you (and he's often doing it at the expense of someone else, raising you up to put someone else down and you won't believe this... it can turn into a seesaw at a whim. yay). and beneath that there's just a seething pit of resentment and inferiority complexes and bitterness left to fester until he can make it everyone else's problem and that IS going to start to bubble up between the cracks with you too if you stick around for long enough. no thank you been there done that wasted my youth and potential on it and all I got was this lousy shiny set of new emotional intimacy issues haunting me for life! trust me illario I HAVE, as it were, chosen the wrong dellamorte before, which is exactly how I know I didn't this time. go get him lucanis I've got your coffee

hilarious mental image: rye and illario sitting quietly together while everyone else is busy milling about during a cursed dellamorte family dinner (the vibes are so bad. you know the vibes are bad. sitting as still as you can and hoping for calm skies is your best bet without lucanis or teia favourite child privileges to work with) and rye out of the blue gazing thoughtfully into nothing over the edge of his glass with half-lidded eyes to go 'you know. you remind me a lot of my ex. not in a good way' and illario with absolutely no shame and hilariously also something that's the closest he ever gets to real sympathy going 'yeah, I get that a lot'. best talk those two ever had, unironically. their bond leveled up to its final form that day. *soulsborne boss defeated text* MUTUAL UNDERSTANDING REACHED)

[yumeyuyumeyume]

I hate hate hate when I see ppl getting my interests WRONG

[androgynousblackbox]

Some of you like Alastor because you think he only ever kills/gets violent for a very good reason and for people who totally deserved it, making him into an anti-hero. I like Alastor because the violence he inflicts upon people is funny to me. We are not the same.

[dontfindmeimscared]

thinking of maybe making a essay-type video on isat/long-winded ramble about how much i like the game and how well it does timeloops and stuff like that...

anyway... any favourite moments from the game that i should look at/obsess over more?? :>

[monstersinthecosmos]

I've been thinking about the part in your latest fic where Marius responds to Daniel's dig about not fucking Armand by saying that Daniel wishes he hadn't.

How do you think Daniel felt looking back on his time with Armand by that point?

Also thank you for spoiling us as always with the incredible fic 🥰✨️

WE TALKED ABOUT THIS A BIT ON DISCORD BUT I WANT TO REALLY LIKE PARK IT HERE AND MARINATE IN MY FEELINGS OKAY??????

(but first of all omg thank you ;.; I’m so happy that you like it)

Before anything else I want to say that in this fic, they’re both just kinda throwing barbs at each other and picking a fight to feel something, and neither of them 100% mean it as much as they just know how to push buttons and pick at each other’s insecurities. So like, on that note, I want to state for the record that Daniel DOESN’T wish he hadn’t, but that Marius is still picking at some really complicated feelings.

[This is going to be really long, I’m sorry!]

I think like we (fandom) get kinda swept away in the silliness & romance of the Devil’s Minion and we don’t talk enough (FOR ME!) about how dark and fucked up it was. I just think it’s worth reminding everyone now and then that the Devil’s Minion chapter is a story about stalking and coercion and substance abuse—they MEET via Armand abducting Daniel and keeping him captive in a pitch black room for days and letting him starve. And to me, that’s part of the charm LMAO but I just feel like I wanna park that idea here in case anyone has forgotten.

So like, I want to think about Daniel Molloy as a 20 year old who was abducted, locked up, and starved by a vampire LMAO, and how the 40 years following that is a roller coaster of trauma and recovery.

And like, okay, insofar as I’m half talking about my own fic that was built with my own headcanons, I think it’s worth asking about Daniel’s life experience as a 20 year old. (I wanna drop this link here because I talked about it once in terms of his sexual experience LOL). Like, we know almost nothing canonically about Daniel’s background, and while that works really great for writing fic and headcanons and is FREE REAL ESTATE BABY, I think we really have to just keep asking like, how much experience does a 20 year old have?

Because I think it’s entirely possible that he never had a serious relationship before? Even if he had, is it relative to being 20 years old? How do we feel about the “serious relationships” we have when we’re that age?

I talked about this in the post I linked about his sexual experience so I don’t want to repeat too much, but we have to realize also that his life effectively STOPPED after the interview. He was on the run, he wasn’t dating lol. He did NOT have a social life. When he stopped running, it was to be with Armand. So what I’m kinda trying to say here is that I think it’s plausible that Armand was his only serious relationship, and that also means that it’s his first serious breakup.

(And while this is like, getting into headcanon territory since the canon is so vague, I will say for the record that it aligns with my ficverse, that almost all of my VC fics take place on the same timeline, so this is at least the truth in this story and it’s the truth of Daniel in all my stories.)

This is something else where, as much as I hate building meta around FANDOM, I want to also take a moment to remind everyone that they broke up lmao. They did! That happened! Fandom gets so swept up in the idea of endgames and whatnot and it's like. THEY BROKE UP LOL. Like yeah yeah that’s what fanfic is for etc etc etc do whatever but like, canonically speaking, Armand never wanted to turn another because he knew that it would inevitably lead to resentment, that makers & fledglings get sick of each and hate each other, that’s what happened!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

(I like to think that Armand was doomed with his self fulfilling prophecy and the trope of I didn’t have a good dad so I can’t be a good dad so he didn’t even try and I’d like to believe in the post-canon ether that they can work something out lol but this is like, the canon, this is what happened. They broke up!!!!!!!!! Daniel got what he wanted and bounced!)

It's also by then the dissolution of an ongoing period of trauma and abuse that has been going on for at least 1/3 of Daniel's life, depending what year they actually made it to, and VC is a series that is often about messy grief, trauma, and grieving abusers.

So the Vamptember/looking in the dark from below collection of fics wasn’t planned or anything, they’re nonlinear little oneshots about different moments and aspects of Marius & Daniel’s relationship. And it’s just a place for me to park all these thoughts I have about them!!!!!!

But thinking about like, Daniel’s life being ruined by vampire -> being turned during a really chaotic Vampire World Event -> BREAKING UP WITH HIS MAKER! -> (???? radio silence in the 1990s) -> Having ND timeout at Marius’s house -> RECOVERING AND BEING IN A REALTIONSHIP WITH HIS MAKER’S MAKER…

It’s just such a complicated thing to look at, you know? In a very basic, easy-to-understand-for-us-mere-mortals way, the easiest way to think about it is that Daniel is recovering from a HORRIFIC breakup, but it’s also the trauma from like, the Everything. And also going from the nonstop Devil’s Minion chaos to like, just having to live as a vampire, and having to live as a vampire on his OWN?

I really really love thinking about this aspect of like the Trondheim & Beyond era because like, we’ve all kinda debated what does Daniel’s “madness” actually entail, like, what is the vampire neurotype yatta yatta, is he just overstimulated and needs a quiet break, can a vampire truly be “mad”, are some people just not fit for the Blood, whatever. But we DO see him recover! And Marius has a hand in the recovery! And I am just absolutely feral climbing the walls thinking about Marius’s feelings about the entire thing.

Because like, Marius has to look at it and think “Good lord Armand fucked this up” and I don’t think it’s possible to pin that on Armand without also accepting that Marius also fucked up with Armand ! And I’m so interested in thinking about how family patterns manifest in vampires—like I’ve written a little bit about if epigenetic trauma can exist inside the bloodline, but it’s also the lessons everyone learns from their makers, and how it informs what type of maker they then become.

I read a really interesting post from @theatlasofclouds the other day about Marius’s particular flavor of toxic empathy, too—the way he does what he thinks is best and what he thinks people needs, without understanding that he doesn’t KNOW what other people need, or that other people don’t operate the way he does, that they have different belief systems and emotional languages. And I tend to think of Marius as a dad-type Fixer—he wants to help people and guide people and wants to be respected as a leader/mentor/teacher.

We don’t have an answer of how or why Daniel wound up with him, but it’s impossible for me to ignore this elephant in the room, that Marius would see Daniel’s predicament as an extension of his own failures!!!!!!!!! Marius has that type of egotism, too, that he’ll feel responsible even if it’s not strictly his own fault!

I like thinking about Marius feeling responsible to fix it and clean it up, even if he's not sure what he's doing, even if he's doing it badly. I always try to approach Marius this way when I write him, so I've tried to make that kinda clear in the fics, too. He doesn't always know the best way to fix something, but he's gonna try anyway. He worships at the altar of his own reason, and doesn't know how to be wrong. (Gosh I know I wrote a big meta about Marius's ego as a defense mechanism but I can't find it lol but TLDR he has to believe in himself because it's the only way to make sense of immortality and any time he's proven wrong or makes a mistake it's a devastating wound to his entire sense of reality.)

It just makes me wonder how Daniel wound up with him, since we never got a complete answer. We know that he turned B+S, and then by the beginning of B&G he's ashamed of something that happened recently, and he thinks everyone's mad at him. Like, is it fair to assume he took in Daniel as a ways to make amends? Does he see Armand's handling of Daniel as a massive fuckup, and does he want to try to help? Does Daniel see that it's also a massive fuckup?

This fic series is really a space for me to daydream about all these angles because I think that these are some REALLY rich relationships, and their space in canon is largely off screen subtext. Like, none of this is really spelled out, but how do we NOT ask these questions?

And I’ve made it like 1500 words into this answer by splitting off into all these different directions, but to focus and bring it back to your question: IT’S COMPLICATED MAN.

I think SO MUCH about the line from TVA “I was no Marius to [Daniel] afterwards.” I think so much about how we don’t have any proof that Marius ever told Armand about his life. As far as we can tell, Armand never told Daniel about HIS life. By this point in the canon timeline, they will have READ it in books!! HAVE THEY EVER JUST TALKED TO EACH OTHER IDK?

Like how do they each FEEL reading that in TVA?! How does anybody begin to make up for it?

I also was so excited that you picked up on this in your AO3 comment on the chapter: “And then the way they trade barbs, I love when characters know each others perfect weak points to attack, and for both of them of course Armand is a huge sore spot that they share” – YES exactly!

There’s a lot to juggle here between like, Marius’s anger issues & trying not to be an angry person vs Daniel who is so very much like Marius in some really meaningful ways, how they might be weird mirrors of each other who sorta saved each other, how they might both operate on some similar wavelengths. I imagined them as the type of couple who doesn’t say I LOVE YOU or get vulnerable until they can push each other into an argument to admit it. In my mind, the chapter ending on “I love you, too” was the first time they’ve said it in that way, and Daniel clocks Marius’s difficulty in apologizing as a HUGE effort that expresses love.

But they’re basically picking a fight to feel something! They’re both saying shit they don’t 100% mean! Daniel’s history with Armand is extremely complicated and Marius knows it! Marius even feels complicit in it!

There’s this thing I really love in fics, I’ve only seen it a couple times so I’m not sure if everyone considers it a proper trope the way I personally do LOL, but I realllllllly love, not when a character loses their virginity, but when they lose their virginity in a disappointing way and then fuck a new person and think “I should’ve saved it for you” asdgjklasdghjkl LORD!!!!!!!!

I just have to wonder if there times where things were gentle and nice and Daniel thought “I wish Marius had been my maker” or other such sentiments. Imagine going from chaotic stalker Armand to calm daddy Marius, you know??????????

It would be natural to think that, and wonder what it would’ve been like, and it’s something I’ve tried to hint at in this series. And it doesn’t have to mean like, that Daniel completely regrets how he was turned or sincerely wishes that it had been Marius, but whomst among us have not looked back at traumatic experiences and wondered what our lives would look like if things had been different for us?

The good news is that I think there’s hope for these fools!!!!!!!!

Like, I am thinking about an arc of Daniel’s Horrific Breakup & Trauma Recovery, where things will settle down and he’ll feel stable and okay and the past won’t be such an open wound anymore. I think it’s also reasonable within the logic of VC that all roads lead to forgiveness and that time heals. He will eventually be okay and feel like, I’m glad it worked out this way, I’m glad Marius can be my companion and not my maker, everything lead us here and it worked out.

And I think like, Daniel & Marius have such a huge shared wound concerning Armand and I like to think that Daniel might be a huge key in everyone kinda figuring it out.

I'M JUST -------

WHAT DO MARIUS & DANIEL SEE IN EACH OTHER’S BLOOD? HOW DOES IT CHANGE THE WAY THEY THINK ABOUT ARMAND? MARIUS SEEING HIM IN AS A DOMINEERING PREDATOR, DANIEL SEEING HIM AS A VULNERABLE HUMAN???

Armand absolutely HAUNTS these two ! And it’s clear to me that they want so desperately to forgive each other and have something again !!!!!!!!!! Vampires are fools for that kind of thing, they mourn time periods and places and relationships! They become (or stay) vampires because they fear death ! They fear mourning !!! They fear loss !!!!

So again sorry we’re now 2300 words into this and I’m still rambling but again to answer the question, How do you think Daniel felt looking back on his time with Armand by that point? *by this point* I think, he’s sorta okay, but it’s still kinda sore. He’s getting there!

10 years ago he would’ve been crushed, and in 10 years he won’t mind at all.

Just anyway!

What a rich relationship these three have! There’s so much to talk about !!!!!!!!!

In conclusion I just gotta bring this back again because TLDR -

[fishblade-koi]

oh god it's happening

i'm overwhelmed because i have too much sketch ideas WHICH IS GOOD BUT ALSO NOT SO GREAT because i don't know what I should focus first and I end up doing nothing in the end😭

SO UUUH POLL ⬇️⬇️⬇️

[quackity1999]

ducky, remember to like...... yeah, I was gonna say take care of yourself but you don't really do that, do you.

go ahead. prove me wrong.

reverse psychology! well done!

. . still, i like to think i am looking after myself. i brush my teeth. i shower. i have this shitty pot plant i water every now and then. i take walks. that's enough to satisfy the "self care" ideal, right?

[horror-enthusiast-xemi]

Back on my bullshit🫶

A colored misc piece that I absolutely adore, Addair is just smitten lmao

[lanternlightss]

genshin ,,, venti and rosaria interactions when

[bucket-puns]

Whatever. More Eglantine because yeah💖