1. Describe [insert person here] how you would describe a character you’re introducing
2. Is there any specific ritual you go through while/before/after your writing?
3. What is your absolute favorite kind of fic to write?
4. Are there any other fic writers you admire? If so, who and why?
5. How many words can you write if you sit down and concentrate intensely for an hour?
6. First fic/pairing you wrote for? (If no pairing, describe the plot)
7. Inspiration, time, or motivation. Choose two.
8. Why do you choose to write?
9. Do you ever have plans to write anything other than fic?
10. What inspires you the most?
11. Weirdest thing you’ve ever written/thought about writing/etc.?
12. A fic you wish you had written better, and why?
13. Favorite fic from another [insert fandom here]?
14. Your favorite side pairings to put in?
15. Your guilty writing pleasure?
16. Do you have structured ideas of how your story is supposed to go, or make it up as you write?
17. Would you describe yourself as a fast writer?
18. How old were you when you started writing?
19. Why did you start writing?
20. A sentence from your work that you’re proud of.
uhhh this is a difficult question to answer because I don’t know your vampire #biases like vampire stories go from horror n gore to like soapy ya and I, being a connoisseur and a scholar, will consume pretty much the entire spectrum of vampire related media lmao. But I will do my best.
(oh, and also – i’ve taken under assumption when you say vampires you mean series where they’re like actual characters and not just zombie fill in villains ie. the 30 days of night series and i am legend. but you should watch both of those things anyway cause they’re pretty good.)
TOP TIER VAMPIRE STORIES I RECOMMEND WHOLEHEARTEDLY
let the right one in – the original, not the remake though the remake is passable in a david fincher’s girl with the dragon tattoo kind of way. The original is weird and spine chilling and atmospheric and haunting and you should absolutely check it out.
a girl walks home alone at night – The summary for this movie is: ‘
Residents of a worn-down Iranian city encounter a skateboarding vampire who preys on men who disrespect women.’. WATCH IT
from dusk to dawn – the series, the movie is alright (just youtube selma hayek’s dance scene honestly) but the series is sooooo good, it’s actually one of my favourite currently airing series in general.
penny dreadful – MY ACTUAL FAVOURITE SHOW AIRING RIGHT NOW. WATCH IT. EVERYONE WATCH PENNY DREADFUL
being human – the uk series, though the american one is also very watchable. really really good and explores a lot of the morality and consequences of being a supernatural creature/vampire especially. also aidan turner is so much hotter when he’s playing quasi evil dudes
MIDDLING TIER VAMPIRE STORIES YOU MIGHT WANT TO CHECK OUT IF THE CONCEPT INTRIGUES YOU
look everyone hates this movie but i loved byzantium. gemma arterton as a misandrist vicious vampire mother furiously trying to protect herself and her fragile waif daughter saoirse ronan and garotting people in the process? Blood fountains? that dude who’s playing darcy in pride and prejudice and zombies as an enforcer of the vampire dude mafia come to kill gemma arterton but is actually totally in love with her and can’t look at her without melting into a puddle of goo? SIGN ME UP! THAT’S SOME GOOD SHIT
look you’re probably not going to believe me but the originals is actually REALLY, REALLY GOOD. like, if you absolutely hate soapy/cw esque shows it’s clearly not going to be for you, but i live for the trash and this is my favourite trash. you don’t have to watch the vampire diaries to understand it (though watching a few eps with the originals probs wouldn’t hurt) and like, it is such a bounty of the creme de la creme of vampire fiction tropes. weird victorian esque no touchey sexual tension, sophisticated lookin suit wearin definitely sociopathic tribal minded loyal to the end murderers, it’s set in new orleans, everyone’s good looking, honestly give it a go you will not be disappointed
hellsing. hellsing is this anime/manga series i used to LIVE FOR when i was like, 13 lmao. it’s pretty bloody/lots of gore and there’s like undead nazis? and stuff but the core story is about alucard (it’s dracula……….. BACKWARDS) this super powerful vampire who is enslaved to the hellsing (as in abraham van) corporation which is led by this super cold super efficent lady called integra and alucard is absolutely batshit crazy in love with her and she basically treats him like this savage animal that’s under her control lmao it’s so great also there’s warrior catholic priests
true blood, the first two seasons of this show were LEGIT. this was my shit in high school. don’t even say ‘godric/eric roof scene’ to me unless you want me to start crying blood and pleading in swedish. however, it goes to complete shit after season two and you’re going to be invested and feel like you have to keep watching for your faves. don’t do it. don’t doooo itttt
buffy and angel, though i was always more of a buffy girl. honestly on rewatch i don’t love this series as much, but it was absolutely formative for me as a yung supernatural lovin’ kid. THE SEASON TWO ENDING REMAINS THE MOST FUCKED UP GREAT SHIT
vampire academy. lmao i read this series when i was in high school in the midst of the post twilight vampire boom phase and that probably definitely influenced my opinion here, but it’s probably my favourite ya vampire series.
underworld. i’m pretty sure this is where the fucking werewolves vs vampires thing came about? which like, thanks for NOTHING kate beckinsale, but other than that these movies are good trashy 00′s goth n leather suits fun.
the vampire chronicles series by anne rice, it’s actually this whole book saga that incorporates like three different series and witches and there’s like 25 books or whatever but i used to love them a lot as teen. the movies are good too – interview with the vampire obviously a classic, and queen of the damned is a 00′s hot mess but worth it for AALIYAH AS AKASHA AFOREMENTIONED QUEEN OF THE DAMNED
…hotel transylvania? HOTEL TRANSYLVANIA
moonlight. this was a funny little show that only lasted a season (rip) with the dude from hawaii 5-0 as a moody vampire and sophia myles as the object of his maudlin affections with bonus logan from veronica mars as an i don’t give a fuck rich dick vampire and shannon sossaman as the protagonist’s evil femme fatale ex/vampire sire. it was legit.
the carmilla youtube series
when i was reallly young i watched this anime called karin? and it was about this girl born into a vampire family but she was like, the world’s shittiest vampire and instead of craving blood she like produced too much blood and would get these massive nosebleeds and she was in love with this completely normal useless dude and kept on trying to hide the fact her family were these creepy ass vampires from him lmao. it was dope
the blade series
I WASTED MY TIME, DO NOT WASTE YOURS
vampire diaries. don’t do it. also they only wrote in diaries for like half a season #falseadvertising
anita blake vampire hunter. nooooooooooooo
this fucking weird ya series called like evernight? the only good thing about it was that the vampire reveal was a fakeout and you thought the dude was the vampire but it was actually the girl. more flipped trope vampire girl/human love interest stories @ world
house of night. house of nooooooo
honestly like 80% of the entire post twilight vampire boom. it takes some serious diggin to find gold in that hot mess
EVERY DRACULA RELATED MEDIA EVER, RATED FOR UR PERUSAL
the 1992 dracula movie, solid aesthetics but like is it brilliant? not very. 6/10
the dracula tv series with jonathan rhys meyers, it only lasted a season and he was creepy weird but the reincarnated lovers trope is always great and lucy was absolutely butt crazy in love with mina, and it ruled. 6/10
the dracula untold movie. charles dance was a vampire living in a cave and apparently he was also meant to be caligula???????? ??????????? 5/10 for luke evans and his cute wife and also again, reincarnated lovers trope
van helsing, i love this stupid movie but it is a stuuuupid movie. 5/10 for the ball scene and kate beckinsale’s dope 00′s corset/curls combo
the league of extraordinary gentleman – HAHAHAHA I LOVE THIS MOVIE SO MUCH. SOOOOOO MUCH PLEASE WATCH IT, IT’S SO BADGOOD. 8/10 BECAUSE MY BAROMETER IS TOTALLY SKEWED also the graphic novels it’s based on are actually brilliant and deserving of a true 8/10
dracula 2000, this movie sucked and it was PERSONALLY offensive to me because dracula was JUDAS ISCARIOT. 3/10
all the b movie old school draculas, collective 7/10
bram stoker’s actual book dracula, the reason this entire post exists, 7/10 i took off three points for bram playing like he didn’t totally rip the shit out of like fifteen different vampire myths from eastern europe
i’d like to think that claire did try to get a hold of cas for her problem, but lucifer was like “shit. shit. humans. dammit, i hate you cas why WHY are you talking to all of these humans. disgusting” and cas is like “dude there are like 3 of them would you calm the shit down”
Warren and I have been toying with expanding the Deep Map Pilots universe. His working title, sent in an email two days with no other text, is “Deep Map Pilots: eXtended Flight Log”. In response, I dumped an idea I’ve had for about fives years on him (this bit of writing below) and whipped up a spot illo when he asked to put it up on warrenellis.com, which is where you’ll find it now.
I don’t know where we’re going with this. We’ll let you know.
Kuiper homesteading program, 2176 AD: start life anew in the off-off world colonies. Smiling posters, Leyendeckeresque, urge the new generation of hopeless intelligentsia to never go home again; There Are No Jobs, anyway, so bootstraps yourself right out of Sol and claim your slice of the diamond studded garter of our mother system. Join the space cowboys, rolling in the deep. Billions of ice and mineral bodies are loitering unclaimed in the deep system! The United States Federal Homesteading Office is prepared to award low-interest loans to every hopeful who has the cojones to shuttle hop to Styx Station 14 and hire a charon to buzz them into the denser regions of the Disk–maybe the site of a recent collision’s debris field, or the rumored location of a really big body, maybe a comet or a big iceball–the kinds of tips you pick up in mining canteens a little farther in, from men too old or too smart to go after it themselves. It’s the closest you get to a sure thing, and its better than trying to claw a smaller, surer claim away from someone who got there first, in one of the already-plumbed regions. You’re sick of neighbors. So you cram into the tug with the stinking pilot who doesn’t bother learning your name (he learned his lesson about that early on), clutching your Homesteading Kit™ in your lap and your scanner on top of that, and he flies you out in the direction of your choosing until you tell him to stop, and lets you out.
The kit’s autodrills will bite into almost anything, kicking up little jets of dust or vapor. You pick something mostly spherical, a few meters across, an object the scanner tells you is made of something that won’t shatter if you hollow it out, and when the drills are done they ping your HUD and you squeeze yourself, in your long-haul sumo suit, into the tunnel they dug for you. The homesteading kit’s cabin bladder is rubbery and flexible, some kind of self-repairing plastic, about as thick as a gym mat. It unflops fatly into your rock’s empty belly, and when you find the airlock attachment you stuff it through best you can into the hole, pull the long neck (like a balloon) back out into space, and then turn around and climb inside, pushing your canisters and flashlight ahead of you. You’ve heard this is when most of the freakouts happen, the rubber cabin bladder and the sumo suit and the vast, vast emptiness all pushing in on you at once–people can’t handle it; tear their suits off, scream into long range channels, kick off from their rocks and throw their kit components away from them, one at a time, just to get some extra velocity in the direction of “home”. They never make it, of course.
The atmo canisters strain at their leashes, gouting oxygen and your other favorite gasses, and gradually inflate the bladder from a body bag into something like a “room”, but you wait many minutes after your HUD gives you the go-ahead before you dare to take off your helmet. Your ears pop painfully, your sinuses empty, the smell of new plastic is almost overwhelming, but you’re breathing. Exhausted, you decide to rest before you set up your rocket crawlers and dashboard. The silence is deafening, but it means you aren’t hearing leaks, and the wet throb of your heart in your ears keeps you awake for a long, long time.
Pratchett went back to older throwaway jokes (like dwarves being apparently unisex) and used them as metaphors to discuss social change, racial assimilation, and other complex issues, while reexamining the species he’d thrown in at the margins of his world simply because they existed at the margins of every other fantasy universe. If goblins and orcs and trolls could think, then why were they always just there to be slaughtered by the heroes? And if the heroes slaughtered sentient beings en masse, how heroic exactly were they? It was a long overdue start on redressing issues long swept under the rug by a parade of Tolkien successors who never thought of anyone green and slimy as anything but a notch on the protagonist’s sword, and much of the urgency in Pratchett’s last few books seemed to be related to them. “There’s only one true evil in the world,” he said through his characters. “And that’s treating people like they were things.”
And in the last of his “grown-up” Discworld books, that idea is shouted with the ferocity of those who have only a few words left and want to make them count. Goblins are people. Golems are people. Dwarves are people, and they do not become any less people because they decide to go by the gender they know themselves to be instead of the one society forces on them. Even trains might be people, and you’ll never know one way or the other unless you ask them, because treating someone like they’re a person and not a thing should be your default. And the only people who cling to tradition at the expense of real people are sad, angry dwellers in the darkness who don’t even understand how pathetic they are, clutching and grasping at the things they remember without ever understanding that the world was never that simple to begin with. The future is bright, it is shining, and it belongs to everyone.
Bucky Barnes continues to be front and center in Civil War marketing. The conflict revolves around him, and I’ve heard that depending on how the editing shakes out, Sebastian Stan might end up with a bigger part than Chris Evans. Even if it doesn’t break that way, Stan is in a LOT of this movie. Spider-Man 3.0 is going to be a big deal because he’s one of the most recognizable superheroes on the planet, and Ant-Man is going to be a scene-stealer for sure, but Bucky Barnes is the one poised to break out. The movie is engineered to show off the Winter Soldier’s capability—he’s got a melee sequence that is f*cking unbelievable—and just how ruthless he is. Team Iron Man is a total flop in the comics, but I think the movie solved it. And he’s not wrong—Bucky Barnes is too dangerous to go unchecked.
kototyph 