#embracing and celebrating the Monstrous Self despite opposition from everyone else who's disgusted and terrified by that

[eisthenameofme]

Reading the Sabbat: The Black Hand v5 book, and it is apparently impossible for me not to see the Sabbat through a Queering Vampirism lense with some of the ways they're describing it. It's very obviously not what they're Trying to do, but that's the impression I'm getting anyway.

Like they start by saying the Purpose of the Sabbat is fundamentally to challenge the status quo, right before calling them fundamentally evil/monstrous antagonists and right after describing how scared all the other kindred are of them and how inscrutible they find their motivations. And then they go right into talking about the philosophy of embracing the Beast and fundamentally Cainite traits and inhumanity/monstrosity (what they are and what seperates them from the rest of society, the Other, which in this reading is also Queerness), to the horror of everyone else, and it's considered fundamentally an aspect of self destruction (see: how people act about trans surgeries). Also, treating something otherwise extremely taboo (ex. diablerie) as a "sacrament", like treating what is normally taboo/reviled as divine isn't also incredibly queer. Also alienation from society and difficulty forming connections.

You couldn't create a queer allegory more like catnip to me if you tried, is what I'm saying

#try to convince myself not to write a The Sabbat: Queering Vampirism essay challenge level impossible #vtm #the sabbat #also to be clear im not trying to say that like. in universe they're not doing terrible things #or that these are the Only themes and the only way of interpretting them. but the idea of #embracing and celebrating the Monstrous Self despite opposition from everyone else who's disgusted and terrified by that #and despite it alienating you from the rest of society and resulting in an entirely seperate framework of looking at things #is something that is Inseperable from queerness for me. like i can only say Good For Them tbh #you (the book) are not doing nearly as good a job as presenting them as one dimensional villains #with no coherent or interesting philosophical positions as you seem to think lmao #so I end up interpretting some of the canon as like. heavily biased information often sourced from an ouside perspective #so not like untrue exactly but selective of what it presents and how it's framed. and that way you can #play a little more with interpretation of canon without outright contradicting canon or defanging it #mypost