So..whats your opinion on Count Dracula and The Phantom of the opera basically being the peepaws of slashers who are in the nursing home on life support? "back in MY day---" -Dracula. Probably
Absolutely.
As a lover of Draculas and Phantoms, I can concur.
Highly emotional about Skug's reaction to the empty world in Theatre Of Shadows.
Like. This is a man who has spent hundreds of years stripped bare like an exposed nerve to sensory input. He can't close his eyes. He can't put his fingers in his ears. He can't sleep. He's "learned to" sort-of sleep by meditating, but he has no way to fully turn off to the world around him.
He's also massively ADHD-coded, a condition associated with sensory processing issues - specifically, hypersensitivity to sensory stimuli, leading to sensory overload.
Add to that, that Necromancers all seem to have a heightened sort of sensory perception - they can all sense the echoes of negative emotions like fear, despair and misery. At a certain power level - which Melancholia reaches in DB - their entire way of processing sensory stimuli, the way they see the world, changes.
Skug is a natural Necromancer. He developed his abilities long before he joined the Temple as Lord Vile, and Vile very quickly outpaced the most advanced teacher they had for him. So he's probably had very little - if any - training in how to deal with those added sensitivities or tune them out. As a dead person commanding death magic - and someone so powerful he can use highly unstable Necromancy without his channelling object - he's probably more sensitive to these things than your average Necromancer.
So in Vile, you have an immensely traumatised torture survivor who's lost all human ways to cope with his pain (he can't comfort eat, he can't get drunk, he can't lose himself in sex, he can't sleep, he's lost his loved ones, he has no way of recovering at all), who's also already hypersensitive to how bright and noisy and Too Much the world is, and now has no way of disconnecting from all that stress, while his senses have been dialled up to 11.
So? Those random, pointless little solo expeditions into dead universes? Were actually probably a desperate man's last resort in trying to decompress, to find somewhere he could get some fucking peace and quiet. Somewhere to just make all the lights and the noise and the emotions that aren't his go away, to make it stop. The only outlet he had, to escape a world that was still hurting him. The only place he could relax.
Anyway vile needs rainymood.com and a lie down in a nice dark room thanks for coming to my ted talk
Feuer! Feuer! Manderley in Flammen! Rettet, was ihr tragen könnt, schneller, schneller, schneller!
My new favourite film of all time…
LISA FRANKENSTEIN (2024) dir. Zelda Williams
Always fascinated by this.
Love the effect of friendship and love on behaviour, especially that of villains or otherwise morally grey characters. This also suggests that the fundamental difference between Lord Vile and Skulduggery is love - love is what created Vile (Skulduggery losing his family and being consumed by rage) and love is what killed him too (Val’s companionship and love of Skul allowing him to move on and improve himself.)
I adore this duo so much - platonic soulmates for the win!
I’m a little obsessed with Skulduggery telling alt Vile that he’s the superior one in DotL because it’s such a fascinating trope subversion.
The typical trope is that a character who is a morally good person is faced with an alternate version of themselves who is stronger, but also evil. Then said character must battle with whether or not they value being strong or being good more.
And this is why I love Skulduggery here so much. He has spent nearly his whole life being the despicable one. He’s cruel. He’s strong and he bullies those weaker than him. Even if he is clever, he is ultimately a brute who’s spent so long being used as a weapon that he’s come to love it. He’s been strong his whole life, he doesn’t want to be strong anymore. He wants to be good in order to please Valkyrie.
And finally, he is faced with a version of himself who is even stronger than him, but also a worse person. He is finally the better person, even if that makes him weaker. He’s happy to be the good one. Even if it means getting literally dragged off and tortured, he gets to know that he’s not as awful as he could be. It is no moral battle for him, it is finally being able to claim moral victory.
And he’s never really worried, even when they take him away to be tortured. Because Vile is alone, there’s nobody in the world who loves him. Skulduggery, on the other hand, has someone who’d burn the world down for him. He doesn’t need to be stronger because he has someone he can rely on. And that’s how he gets away with claiming superiority to Vile. His growth as a character over the series has resulted in there being someone who will break him out.
Anyways, subversion of annoying tropes for the win. Skulduggery’s relationship with Vile fascinates me.
I usually don’t do anything about V for Vendetta until November the fifth (because I’m dramatic), but this is such a meaningful post, especially with how the world is at the moment. I love this film to pieces, and every year it becomes more relevant in my mind.
I hate that V’s mask is considered ‘edgy’ and is associated with horrible macho dicks on the internet instead of the revolutionary ideology the film suggests.
seeing all the 14-17 y/o queer kids who don’t know what v for vendetta is…. u mean the blockbuster film written by two trans women about a masked vigilante who decides to singlehandedly take down a fascist alternate version of england set in the distant year of 2020… and his driving force was getting justice for a lesbian who he never met but whose diary he found, who was separated from her wife before being killed by said fascist gov…. and it stars natalie portman…. okay
Please Toblerone, let them be brothers, let them love each other. Don’t make them hate each other
Maybe we’re the same
Saw this in a Facebook group and my first thought was
“Did…did Mildred type this? 👁👄👁”
This is so cool. I love seeing fanart for sitcoms, it’s great - especially older ones.
Reblogging for Richmond being dramatic in the background. He is everything I want to be as a goth. Fabulous.
POV you're a PC getting turned off and on again (speedpaint)
Today, August 30th, is Frankenstein Day and Mary Shelley’s Birthday! To celebrate the first horror novel, we decided to ask our contributors about their favorite queer horror novels and ended up with 28 titles for a very spooky end of summer. Contributors to this list are: Shadaras, D.V. Morse, Nova Mason, Terra P. Waters, Rhosyn Goodfellow, Nina Waters, Meera S., Shea Sullivan, Owl Outerbridge, Sanne, Tris Lawrence, boneturtle and an anonymous contributor.
The Luminous Dead by Caitlin Starling
Someone You Can Build a Nest In by John Wiswell
The Devourers by Indra Das
Into the Drowning Deep & Rolling in the Deep (Rolling in the Deep series) by Mira Grant
What Moves the Dead (Sworn Soldier series) by T. Kingfisher
Bury Your Gays by Chuck Tingle
Camp Damascus by Chuck Tingle
I Feed Her to the Beast and the Beast Is Me by Jamison Shea
Sixteen Souls by Rosie Talbot
The Honeys by Ryan La Sala
The Taking of Jake Livingston by Ryan Douglass
Kaleidoscope of Death by Xi Zi Xu
The Dead and the Dark by Courtney Gould
Alice Isn’t Dead by Joseph Fink
Squad by Maggie Tokuda-Hall
The Hills of Estrella Roja by Ashley Robin Franklin
The Vampire Lestat (The Vampire Chronicles series) by Anne Rice
The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde
The Summer Hikaru Died by Mokumokuren
Pet Shop of Horrors by Matsuri Akino
Your Shadow Half Remains by Sunny Moraine
The Deep Sky by Yume Kitasei
Make the Exorcist Fall in Love by Aruma Arima & Masuku Fukayama
Hell Followed With Us by Andrew Joseph White
Summer Sons by Lee Mandelo
Fate/Stay Night by Type-Moon
Umineko When They Cry by Ryukishi07
Case 00: The Cannibal Boy from Sounding Stone
Welcome to Night Vale
The Silt Verses
Want to chat your favorite reads with us? Join our Book Lover’s Discord server!
Update your Goodreads TBR with any of these books by visiting our queer horror shelf on Goodreads!! Or, jump onto Bookshop.org and browse these books on our queer horror list!
Lesbianism and polyamory in my Disney show? Yes please. I also need more of Maleficent with her hair down / out.
That scene between Regina and Mal in her castle was was more gay than it had any right to be…
Honestly, as tropey and lazy as this season is, this arc is so fun because it’s basically mean (lesbian) women making fun of Rumpelstiltskin to his face. I also adore the scenes in which he is talking to a woman who is taller than him - the fact that Anna was taller makes my day. Can you tell that I love the fact that he’s short? It kind of validates me as a short fellow myself.
the queens of darkness arc is a lot more entertaining if you view it in the perspective that they used to be couples who went on double dates but now they've both broken up and have to spend time together for work.