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madsciencestudent · 2 years

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Fuck It; Halloween Music List

The Addams Family Theme - Amc Orchestra

The Addams Family Sinatra Style - Joey Gaynor

Halloween Spooks - Lambert, Hendricks, and Ross

Cosmik Debris - Frank Zappa

Witch Doctor - David Seville

Witchy Woman - Eagles

Season of the Witch - Donovan

In the Hall of the Mountain King - Grieg

(Ghost) Riders In the Sky - Outlaws

Monster Mash - John Zacherle

I Put A Spell On You - Jay Hawkins

Scary Monsters (And Super Creeps) - David Bowie

Dinner with Drac - John Zacherle

Monster Mash - Bobby Pickett

Ghost Busters - Ray Parker Jr.

Bad Moon Rising - Creedence Clearwater Revival

Spooky - Classics IV

Abracadabra - Steve Miller Band

Soul Man - Sam and Dave

Stayin’ Alive - Bees Gees

Grim Grinning Ghosts - The Living Tombstone featuring Crusher P + Corpse Husband

Grim Grinning Ghosts - Creature Feature

Halloween (Extended) - Da Boy Tommy

Monster Mash - The Misfits

Prologue (Little Shop of Horrors) - Bill Mitchell, Michelle Weeks, Tichina Arnold, Tisha Campbell

Werewolves of London - Warren Zevon

Boris the Spider - The Who

Graveyard Waltz - The Hooters

Thriller - Micheal Jackson

Time Warp - Little Nell, Patricia Quinn, Richard O'Brien

Sweet Transvestite - Tim Curry

Hot Patootie (Bless My Soul) - Adam Lambert

Magic Dance - David Bowie

Remains of the Day - Tim Burton's Corpse Bride Soundtrack Danny Elfman

The Purple People Eater - Sheb Wooley

Jeepers Creepers - Jack Teagarden

Hush, Hush, Hush Here Comes the Boogeyman - Henry Hall

The Greatest Show Unearthed - Creature Feature

Dead Man’s Party - Oingo Boingo

Something Wicked (That Way Went) - Vernian Process

Spooky Scary Skeletons (Remix) - The Living Tombstone

Pet Sematary - The Ramones

Godzilla - The Blue Oyster Cult

(Don’t Fear) The Reaper - The Blue Oyster Cult

Pumkpinhead - The Misfits

Allison Gross - Steeleye Span

Sweet Dreams (Are Made of This) - Marilyn Manson

This is Halloween - Marilyn Manson

This is Halloween - The Citizens of Halloween

Kidnap the Sandy Claws - KoRn

Friends on the Other Side - Keith David

Voodoo Child (Radio Edit) - Rogue Trader

Friends on the Other Side- Disney Villain Mashup - Thomas Sanders

The Dismemberent Song - Blue Kid

Touch-Tone Telephone - Lemon Demon

In the Dark of the Night (Metal Cover) - Jonathan Young

The Devil Went Down to Georgia - The Charlie Daniels Band

Beelz (My Name is Satan!) - Stephen Lynch

Legend of Wooley Swamp - The Charlie Daniels Band

(Ghost) Riders in the Sky - Johnny Cash

Brains! - Voltaire

Ramalama Bang Bang - Rōisín Murphy

"I Put A Spell On You" Hocus Pocus Villain Spelltacular Finale - Various Artists

I Put a Spell On You - Bette Midler

Every Day is Halloween - Ministry

Are You Ready for Freddy? - Fat Boys featuring Freddy Krueger

Teenage Frankenstein - Alice Cooper

Chop Chop Slide - Insane Clown Posse

#halloween music list #aka everyday listening music for me BUT for the first part- until Stayin' Alive- ONLY halloween music if in that specific order #has to be in that specific order #ended up being so long geez....#but so many people seem to miss these on playlists and everything so HERE!

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yet-another-greek-myth-gay · 19 days

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Once again sitting here thinking about how, for all the remorse August felt about the video, for how shitty of a person he felt like he was for posting it, for all his efforts (however subpar they were) to try and apologize to Wille about it...Simon never got a fucking apology.

Which makes sense, and shows how, at August's core, he's still an elitist, superior prick, even if he's more cognizant of his flaws and more uncomfortable with them than he's ever been. He could not be bothered to apologize Simon, doesn't even have the thought cross his mind—why? Because Simon's a nobody. Simon has no power. Like, let's be clear, August has fucked up his life irreparably. There is literally no future where the video will not haunt Simon. (I read a great fanfiction I have to find the link for, where Simon says that he was fucked the minute August hit "post," no matter what Wille said or did, and like...yeah.) That shit was all over the news in Sweden. We see, already, people recognizing him out in public. Beyond even just the emotional turmoil that comes with that video existing, we see, through the posting of his address and the rock through the window, that its existence physically endangers Simon. Even if Simon were to leave the country, move somewhere new and try to start over, it would take one google search of his name to uncover that blight on his life.

That's not to say that Simon couldn't process its existence emotionally, or that he won't be able to lead a happy, fulfilling life with the video existing, because he absolutely can and will! It just incenses me that not once in August's journey of feeling this guilt and shame over the video, and reaching some sort of understanding and peace with Wille, does he once consider giving Simon any sort of apology. (The settlement doesn't count, of course.) It makes sense for his character, and Simon probably wouldn't have accepted the apology, and by no means should be expected to, but the fact that he didn't get one still makes me so angry.

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orderforbrian · 21 days

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@jonmartinweek Day 5 - cryptids | webs & weaving

when i saw the prompt webs & weaving i immediately thought about web!martin weaving spiderweb into jon's hair -- unbeknownst to jon who is just too blissed out by getting his hair touched, and apparently too asleep to notice his boyfriend has four hands (and also the, uh, spiders). the progression of gray in his hair is just subtle enough that jon can't make the connection which is perfect for martin who needs to keep track of him

bonus:

[START ID: Two drawings in purple hues of Jon and Web!Martin from a Web AU of The Magnus Archives. Jon is a thin Persian man with medium length, curly dark hair and a beard, all hair streaked with gray. Martin is a fat mixed Polish/Korean man with shaggy dark hair, a streak of white in one of his bangs, and several beauty marks on his skin. 1st image: Jon lays asleep on top of Martin's chest, his head nuzzled into the crook of Martin's neck. One hand is curled to his chest and the other rests behind Martin's head. He smiles blissfully, feeling perfectly safe while asleep. Martin looks down at Jon with a smile, one eye a bright magenta with a slit pupil. The other side of his face is obscured by Jon's head and shadow. One of Martin's hands holds Jon's hand on his chest, the other draped around Jon's low back. His other two hands have spiderweb wrapped around his fingers, the fingertips pointed into sharp claws. One is close to the nape of Jon's neck, the other held above Jon's head, both with shining white web pulled and connected to the greys in Jon's hair. Jon's hair lifts slightly in the back with the pull of the webbing, other parts curled around Martin's fingers. Several spiders crawl around Martin's skin, notably one across his cheek. Martin says in multiple speech bubbles, "Jon...Jon? Are you asleep? There's spiders in your hair...I'll take that as a yes" with a heart at the end. 2nd image: A simpler drawing, Jon looks into a mirror aghast at the amount of white in his hair, three exclamation points by his head. His arms hover around his hair, and he frustratedly shouts, "Where do all these grey hairs keep coming from?!!". An arrow points to a small drawing of Martin's head, looking to the side with a W smirk, now with eight eyes, says, "I dunno...hehe". End ID.]

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aromanticduck · 8 months

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#polls #hyperspecific poll #specific poll #nothing going on here #just psyched that the number of options has gone up :)#reuploading because i put the options in the wrong order (yes there is a right one)#organic home grown content #100 tier

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hearvex · 10 months

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yeah

#i feel like tumblr would also like this one #the way he just has to move his entire torso in order to see in a specific direction ?#baymax core #also dream would 100% say balalalala

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martianbugsbunny · 6 months

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Crowley like, never eats stuff when he and Aziraphale are on one of their meal dates, so I'm going to go ahead and headcanon that during one of their earlier meals he ordered but never actually ate his food, and Aziraphale was like "you gonna finish that? it's a shame to let such good food go to waste" and Crowley was like "have at it" so now every time they go out together Crowley orders something he knows Aziraphale will like and doesn't eat it on purpose so Aziraphale can have it

#I also don't think aziraphale has figured that out yet #he's well aware that crowley is fine if aziraphale steals his food he just hasn't figured out why crowley orders in the first place #also it's literally so cute #he's just like oh angel cake? mine now #(the idea of crowley having ordered angel cake specifically for aziraphale to eat gets me)#help #they're consuming me at an equivalent rate to aziraphale consuming that ox #good omens #good omens book #aziraphale #crowley #ineffable husbands #aziracrow #food date #martianbugsbunny ships

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bumblingbabooshka · 4 months

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We must stop interpreting Tuvok's rejection of spice as indicative of Vulcans as a whole and focus in on it as an individual failing that falls on his shoulders alone...

#voy #Tuvok #When Tuvok orders 'mild spice' at a restuarant on Vulcan he has to specify that he MEANS 'mild'#and his family is like auuuughhhh......<-internally #many things Tuvok attributes to Vulcans as a whole very conveniently line up with things he specifically doesn't want to do <3 #and you know what? I'd absolutely 1000% do the same thing if I were the only Human amongst Aliens #soooorrrry oh my god this is so embarrassing but Humans actually CANNOT vaccuum....it hurts our little ears oohh ouch sorry <3

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clannfearrunt · 7 months

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HEY HOW ARE WE FEELING ABOUT DEDF1SH/ACHT BEING CANONICALLY THEY/THEM

I think I've unwittingly become the fucking Splatoon Gender Bad News Guy but I would not get your hopes up in the slightest:

The translation in Splat 3 has been kind of Weird, not with the major shit as far as I know (thankfully) but with little things on the side; they have little oddities that would not be fucking there if the English team were communicating well with the JP team, which doesn't inspire confidence in the quality of their already pretty Meh english twitter posts.

I would watch the info on Dedf1sh's Official Bio on their splatbands info section of their website:

(sorry every website I use is in comic sans it's the firefox settings)

If they change Ded's pronouns to they/them in here, THEN I would get out the bottles. Or if they use they/them in the actual game when Side Order comes out.

tldr: bizarrely, I super would not trust the goddamn official Twitter account for info which is certainly a fucking sentence but it's true! Shit's weird. Shit's weird in the game even. Just don't get your hopes up and get them shattered or god forbid start up discourse I can't do this again you Cannot Start Dedcourse 2. HOLD YOUR HORSES EVERYONE we have jumped the gun on Dedf1sh Translation before and it ended in disaster learn from the mistakes of the past

#sorry im kind of talking to a General Audience here bc this is a bit of an info post. ''you'' isn't specifically you!#splatoon #asks #duskittycat #dedf1sh #splatoon 3 #splatoon side order #ive been calling shiver's situation Dedcourse 2 but IT'S ACTUAL DED THIS TIME #nintendo barely has a grasp on binary trans people let alone nonbinary people you have to set your expectations a little lower

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butchsophiewalten · 4 months

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Thought I had posted about this already whups. Martin made a really important twitter thread earlier:

#the walten files #I already said my little piece about this over on twitter. I just hope he's well and that he takes a long break #and that he knows his own mental wellbeing is orders of magnitude more important than any specific date for episode release #I'll admit that i'm really saddened by his attitude here. And my stomach kinda turns whenever he peppers in the little reassurances like-#-'but don't worry i'll still try to get episode 4 on time!!' like Man. that should not be your biggest concern #And all i really hope for is for him to take as long of a break from the series as he needs as often as he needs #and I really hope he can figure out an approach to this series that keeps it fun and enjoyable to work on and that he can be happy with and #-proud of without fucking killing himself over it like he has been #Because this kind of overwork crunch ethic has no upsides for anybody. It's bad for him and it's bad for The Walten Files and it's bad for-#-the community. no one benefits from this

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mwagneto · 5 months

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why is everyone suddenly jackdoctor posting. like i'm not complaining i've just been indescribably sick over that entire storyline for years so it's funny to see it picking up steam again

#UTOPIA IS UP NEXT IN MY REWATCH BRO I WILL LITERALLY DIE 😅#and i keep seeing that utopia clip someone posted that i still can't hit play on like oh my GODD you want me to die #the way it's like. already batshit crazy if you just watch dr who but then here i am having #consumed literally hundreds of hours of extra content and soso deeply ill #YOU GUYS DON'T EVEN KNOW ABOUT.... HHNNHNYJTNJFHFHFHFHDHB #so glad i get to force THREE of my friends to watch t.orchwood with me coz I #never got to talk abt it before and now I'll finally be unleashed. lordddddd #like ohhmy god it's not even like... like i dont SHIP them i dont think i ship anything in dw #but what an incredible story especially after you get All of jack's side of it. hough #i should whip up a list or a watching/listening order or something the catalogue of dweu in #my head has to be of SOME use other than making 3 specific ppl sit through it with me....#doctor who #jackdoctor #jack harkness #trying to start a tagging system for dw after 7 years on tumblr is gonna bite me in the ass

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sleepanonymous · 3 months

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I am never forgiving Vessel for closing Sundowning with the song Blood Sport and opening This Place Will Become Your Tomb with Atlantic. Sir how could you do that to your fans? This is just too painful 😭😭

#sleep token #sundowning #this place will become your tomb #tpwbyt #song blood sport #song atlantic #sleepanon rant #mini version #if you don't count the deluxe version of sundowning that is #my brain has been stuck on this fact for weeks #but don't feel like i have the brain capacity to legitimately compare the two songs #someone else has had to compare them before anyway #right?#idk listening to the 3 albums in order with 1 specific person in mind altered my brain chemistry #on a completely unrelated side note #i notice a lot more of ii's drumming now after that drumeo interview #like i obviously heard it before #but i pay extra attention to it now #istg i want a friendship with chemistry like what ves and ii have

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fayevalcntine · 9 months

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Positioning Louis as the "Edwardian wife who becomes trapped by her husband" in a literal sense does no justice to analyzing his actual place and role as a Black man in his society and in his relationship with Lestat. Any interpretation or analysis you do of him when it comes to their relationship cannot be stripped of the racial aspect because it's constantly there. Texts analyzing Edwardian wives (and particularly ones this fandom loves to bring up) typically were white and the dissection of their place in societal rules are always viewed from the aspect of gender that is within these texts only allowed to white women, but never to Black men or even Black women. And gender and race become inseparable when you discuss the latter, no matter how people may view it.

This is why I can't take this approach to analyzing Louis' story seriously because if you don't consider the racial aspect in his relationship even to himself and his sexuality, what's the point? You're still centering the standards that were more placed upon white male/female couples than you're willing to look into the unique structure of Black families, religion, their view of homosexuality and how that sooner heavily influences Louis than the family's "need" for him to be sold off to an Edwardian husband. Even in Louis' own story, him and Claudia being Black is more centered on than any demeaning "housewife" comment he tries to go against from Claudia's perspective. She makes that comment once, whereas we have at least two episodes from Louis' perspective that have very blatant hints and showings of the racism he still suffers from under the Jim Crow era and how it affects his self-worth as well as his relationship with Lestat who doesn't seem to take into consideration how any of the blatant racial aggressions and objections still affect Louis and what he considers to be important to achieve in his own life.

Then there's also the pointed topic of Louis' position as a Black man who is a pimp to the Black women he has as sex workers, as well as how his position as a Black father affects Claudia, another Black girl. If you insist on Louis being centered as this "Edwardian white wife" who is confined by his implicit gender in his marriage, where does that leave Claudia and the blatant misogyny and disrespect she gets from both him and Lestat? Lestat who is her white father abuses her. Positioning Louis within the strict confines of "being her mother" doesn't do her any favors because he didn't hesitate to choke her when he was deeply emotionally distressed, nor does it make him look any better when he's fine with chopping up her diaries and then delivering them on a silver platter so that Daniel, another white man, can read and dissect. Even if he does this under the sole pretense of "doing right by her", how does it in any way help when he also can't face up to his failures towards her?

#interview with the vampire #claudia #louis de pointe du lac #i just feel like all these needless 'Lestat is the patriarchy' discussions; even when done in order to shield Louis #do him and Claudia no favors because y'all keep centering these weird strictly white standards in your interpretations #'Louis is an Edwardian wife' Louis is a Black man who was turned in 1910s Louisiana #the structural confines Edwardian wives were given really aren't the same when you take into consideration the racial segregation #of Louis' time; and I feel like the specific issues that Black men then faced when it came to 'proving' their worth when it comes to gender #are then just sidelined and forgotten as if those aren't the standards Louis grew up with #if you want to discuss Louis' placement in his relationship with Lestat it's kind of really heavy-handed even on the show #that he's a black man and that that heavily affects him foremostly in this relationship #also I'm so confused over this insane idea that Lestat is somehow the patriarchy while Louis is a woman and y'all say this unprompted #without considering how it looks when you call a gay black man a woman and a white bisexual man a guy #i feel like you can evade bad stereotypes of painting black men as overaggressive without veering off into the whole other side #while still sounding vaguely backhanded #and it doesn't make it any less weird when I see other non-black/white fans insist on this interpretation #it just comes off as y'all sooner being able to connect to Louis if you see him in a role typically embodied by white women #than to refer to the actual identity he has as a black gay man

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cestacruz · 3 months

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Anyway since i dont think i actually posted these, have this

Bitches from a Monster AU theyre all gay

Uhh more in the tags cuz i dont wanna type here

#my art #fate grand order #artoria pendragon #salter #lalter #goddess rhongomyniad #saber #jalter #rhongomyniad and lalter are basically inmortal from literally thousand years before the set of the AU #they hate each other its fine #arturia is just. mm magic creature idk a specific name for it? if someone knows please tell me and dont just say furry because theyre not #salter's a vampire because im a simp #jalter is human because i find it hilarious #lalter is gay for jalter and theyre gay together #salter ends up being gay for jalter too and lalter wants to kill her but jalter is gay and has two hands #rhongomyniad has all the mental illnesses im sorry #obsessed with the descendant (arturia) of the royal family she failed to protect #designs are not like finished this is an OLD PIECE

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winepresswrath · 5 months

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hi! i always love your MDZS/CQL takes; can i ask what are the questions you think CQL is asking, as compared to MDZS?

I haven't actually revisited either canon in ages, which is making me nervous. what questions the novel is interested in can be pretty contentious all on its own! @mikkeneko has an excellent answer in the notes here which I reccomend to everyone. My own thoughts are honestly pretty scattered- I keep on deleting things and going hm, that's not quite right.

So, for the obvious-to-me example, people reasonably zero in on the creation of innocent doctors/radish farmers who Wen Ruohan is holding hostage. In CQL it's easy to infer that Wen Qing and Wen Ning are maybe the only cultivators and almost certainly the only combatants among the Wen remnants, and their status is much more ambiguous in the novel, which I personally think is asking, essentially, "and so what? were they wrong to run, when they had a chance? Do they deserve what Jin Guangshan will do to them if they go back? Aren't they just people, actually?" Whereas the question that CQL is asking is more to the effect of "What does Wen Qing owe these people, when she is their only defence? What is she entitled to do to save them, at other people's expense? If she fucks up that moral calculus, what then? Does it matter if she's personally fond of some of the outsiders who are going to get hurt? If one of them saved her brother? Later, this question will flip to what Wei Wuxian and Jiang Cheng, and the parallel to Jiang Cheng's situation in particular is, I think, genuinely pretty fun. You're giving up the Wen as soldiers who've laid down their arms in exchange for Wen Qing also grappling with leadership and the question of how many horrors she can stand to look the other way on to protect her own people. one reason I keep deleting so much is that a lot cql's changes were motivated at least in part by censorship, which I think we mostly share a general and justified distaste for! but I also think that within the bounds of that censorship the creative team put a lot of work into actually doing something interesting with those changes. Or, for another example- nieyao! There's a much greater emphasis on the nmj-jgy relationship, it's unambiguously very close and they are clearly extremely important to one another, and I think that's because the cql team has a lot to say about love, trust, power, and the ways those things interact, and that reflects back on all of the other relationships in play, including Wangxian. Almost every time, when CQL chooses change a relationship they make the characters in question closer- that's true for Jiang Cheng and Lan Wangji, for Wen Qing and the Yunmeng contingent, for Zixuan and Mianmian, and Huaisang and Meng Yao. It's even true for Lan Wangji and Wei Wuxian, who have a close and trusting relationship in first life! CQL puts a much greater emphasis on "all right, so you care, what next?" How do you choose someone and then choose to be good to them? What if there's a massive power disparity between you? What if you seriously disagree about your priorities and morals? How do you trust someone who's betrayed you? When is it a stupid choice to trust at all? How do you have faith that you know someone well enough for that trust to be meaningful?

for legal reasons i would like to specify that it's not that mdzs isn't interested in these problems. i do remember wangxian's literal trust fall. cql is asking these questions all the time about everyone. also for legal purposes i'm not suggesting that cql lwj and jc love each other. but! they establish a three month wartime partnership looking for wwx and then jc immediately drops him on wwx's say-so despite apparently having a positive enough opinion of him to tell wwx he thinks they should make up twice. lan wangji will later tell wwx he thinks he should loop jc in on the second flautist! these are people trying to navigate some kind of relationship/shared interest/community, as opposed to a hateful void. cql wants to say hey, how do you go about this? while I'm here and rambling cql also puts a lot of emphasis on wwx's connection to yunmeng and changes things up so instead of feeling alienated right before he leaves our last glimpse of him there is happily picking lotuses and playing with a kid! in both stories the narrative is asking who do you protect? who do you leave behind? can you ever get it back? but the angles are very different.

#why are there so many people who simultaneously argue that cql dumbs down mdzs and also that mdzs is the slow reveal of how wwx is a #perfect angel who has never done anything wrong in his life #being let down by everyone around him #surely you have to pick an option #but lan wangji and wei wuxian being close friends in the first life really does change everything #i have seen people (reasonably) be annoyed with this as an adaptation choice #but! i like this change a lot and i think they do interesting things with it #There's still a lot of emphasis on what makes them so particularly perfect for each other but imo moving Lan Wangji into the category of #people wwx loved in the first life #shifts the focus from #when will they get together #to #What it would take and what would they have to do for these people to have to do to have a successful partnership?#If loving someone is the first step what comes next? Who do I want to be to the people around me?#i love the focus on wwx's trust issues as trust issues! problems that he's had with lwj specifically before!#and the solution isn't just oh well lwj is perfectly trustworthy #though that's obviously part of it #wwx has to like. decide for himself to do some things differently this time around in order to reap the rewards of being really in it with #someone. and lwj does too! it's a journey they're on together #i have simply rambled in all directions i'm sorry anon

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jjba-smash-or-pass · 3 months

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#since he and his stand are named the same thing I went with his birth name in order to keep things from being confusing #I don't count it as deadnaming specifically because the only reason he's named something different is bc he forgot his name #also. hi my beloved mutual. your time has come.#I mean I'm gonna smash too but I'm mostly looking forward to your insane ramblings #wes bluemarine #stone ocean #jojo's bizarre adventure

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vorestarr · 4 months

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thoughts on vampirism as a symbol of trauma

i've been thinking about this in relation to Astarion's story arc for a while and started writing this post a couple times, only to have it become much longer than expected, so for now this post is just going to be about the different paths of ascension vs spawn from the end of his personal quest. (i think there are multiple ways to read his story, and this is just the way i've been reading and thinking about it.)

the basic idea of this post is that Astarion's vampirism is a physical manifestation or symbol of his trauma, and therefore the two different ending paths for him are distinguished by how he addresses his vampirism (and therefore trauma).

it's pretty clear that the vampirism itself is a traumatic experience for Astarion, from how he describes almost dying, then actually dying, and then everything that comes afterwards at Cazador's hands. but i think of this a step further, in that the actual symptoms of vampirism are also part of this. there's an idea that there are physical manifestations of traumatic experiences held in the body, even if the trauma itself was psychological in nature (i.e., the body keeps the score). this is how i read vampirism for Astarion, specifically.

to start, he's turned into a vampire after a traumatic experience (almost being killed by a group of people one night). he's "saved" from this by Cazador turning him into a vampire, but still his body literally dies when he turns into a vampire, which is another separate traumatic event where he feels himself die and then has to climb out of his own grave. (also noted, i believe it's hinted that Cazador orchestrated the attack on Astarion that almost killed him in the first place, so Cazador is the cause of all of this trauma in one event that is Astarion becoming a vampire.)

his body is physically changed by the experience. he loses things because of it, maybe things that were not particularly important to him but now seem incredibly important once they're gone (like walking in the sun) or things that were previously important to him and now he can no longer enjoy (living indulgences and pleasures like food, or his own reflection). also critically, he cannot get those things back. his life is changed (literally ended) and there's no fixing it.

he learns coping strategies during the subsequent 200 years, which i will not get into in this post, but suffice to say that he learned things that he believed would protect him in the moment.

after the tadpole when he experiences freedom from Cazador's influence for the first time, there are some critical shifts that happen to start him on a path to address these things, or not. the recent interview where the devs mention that the ascended path is one of fear, i really agreed with and have said similar things in previous posts, because to me, i think the main difference between how Astarion acts in those paths is that for ascension, he relies on the methods he learned in those 200 years to survive in the moment, while in the spawn path, he learns new ways to cope.

to elaborate on that, i think the ascension path specifically is about avoidance.

in trauma, avoidance is what it sounds like: avoiding any triggers or negative emotions related to the traumatic experience. the avoidance can manifest in different ways, but a key idea is that by avoiding those negative feelings, they are never actually addressed.

i think there are two big ways this manifests in Astarion's story, related to vampirism:

ascended Astarion is avoiding those negative feelings of fear of Cazador (or someone else doing what Cazador did) by focusing on seizing power and control. if he's more powerful, in control of a situation, then nothing bad can happen to him again. the way this ties back to vampirism as a symbol of trauma is that this is literally described to us in the game as the natural course of life for vampires: they live in fear of other vampires, fear of their own spawn seizing their power, etc. this is the story of Vellioth and Cazador, and then later Cazador and Astarion (regardless of the choice he makes to ascend or not). we even get a list of vampires where ALL their life spans/eras of power are timed so that we can infer that each subsequent vampire has killed the previous vampire to dethrone them. so, vampirism itself is trauma and the known course of vampirism is this same cycle we see repeated with multiple vampires and histories in game. by taking a different path and not becoming a full vampire, spawn Astarion has started to learn a new way of dealing with his vampirism/trauma, rather than avoiding it.

the OTHER major way i see this manifest in the game is how ascension and spawn paths deal with the literal symptoms of vampirism: walking in the sun, Astarion's reflection, food versus drinking blood, the vampiric state of undeath, etc. these are all things that changed about Astarion when he became a vampire, and things that (in the normal course of events) cannot be changed back. he died, he's dead, there's no curing his vampirism. in other words, there's no going back to who he was before the traumatic experiences. that by itself is a neutral statement, the same way that there's no going back to who a person is before any major event (be it meeting someone important, choosing to take a certain job, etc etc), because we are all constantly changing and growing. HOWEVER, i think the places with Astarion where this stops being neutral is how he addresses that fact: with acceptance or avoidance.

to elaborate on the second point, which is my main reason for making this post:

on the spawn path, Astarion learns new ways to be and to live with his vampirism. in his epilogue, he can mention that he's not bothered by losing the sun again, he can describe finding a sense of belonging with others who share his vampirism, and he can define himself in new ways that he's picked for himself rather than stay in the definition of vampire that Cazador held.

in the ascension path, Astarion avoids all of those difficult realizations and choices. he falls back on the same strategies that helped him survive in the moment for those 200 years, but which can and do hurt him after escaping that environment. he's working hard to keep from addressing those negative feelings -- and on the surface, this works! he can walk in the sun without the tadpole! he has new vampire powers and he can do all the things he lost when he died! he can see his own reflection again! but, he's still a vampire, still has his fangs, still has his red eyes.

this is why i think the route is characterized by fear and why i found that interview with the devs interesting: by focusing on all those avoidance behaviors, Astarion ends up being stuck in a state of mind that's all about fear because it's all about avoiding that feeling. he feels great in the moment because he has been able to claim back some of what was taken from him, but this is not a solution because he's still a vampire.

personally, i do not read the ascension path as continuing a cycle of abuse, but as the continuation of avoiding the painful process of healing from trauma.

ascended Astarion is elated after killing Cazador because he feels the power flowing through him and it makes him feel safe in the moment, and because he is avoiding addressing any lingering feelings of pain or negativity, including avoiding addressing that he just killed 7000 people.

spawn Astarion meanwhile looks absolutely miserable immediately after killing Cazador when he cries and breaks down, and then he feels numb later because he's so overwhelmed. this i think resembles something that can happen in trauma therapy, where a person feels worse when they initially start addressing and working through their trauma, because it means actually feeling all of those negative emotions they've been avoiding.

in the end, ascended Astarion has not changed how he addresses his trauma or vampirism, and the ascension has actually given him more tools to continue avoidance. spawn Astarion meanwhile is exploring other ways of living with his vampirism, and can be experiencing success with that by the time the epilogue rolls around (even if there are some bumps and regressions along the way, like losing his ability to walk in the sun again).

because this is my main reading, i also don't think this makes ascended Astarion evil or irredeemable -- i think he shows that he does still have all the emotions that he's displayed through the game and therefore he still has the potential to follow the same path that spawn Astarion did in healing. but, the critical thing with the ascension path is that he does not have the clear motivation or triggering event to start him down that path. he's further away from that, and it will take more work to get there. everything he did after all comes back to the ways he learned to survive under Cazador, so those behaviors helped him at one point. the issue is that he's past the point of those things helping him, but he can't let them go.

tl;dr: i like looking at vampirism itself as a physical symbol of trauma and as a way to read Astarion's potential storylines, because it provides a context for me to view how the ascension and spawn paths treat his vampiric symptoms -- avoiding them in the ascension path by giving him an "out" of sorts to avoid addressing how those symptoms impact his life because of the extra abilities granted to him by the ritual, versus being forced to grapple with them and figure out a way to life with them and even enjoy them on his own terms in the spawn ending.

if you read this whole post, thanks for sticking with me and feel free to share your thoughts too. :)

#astarion #meta #astarion ancunin #i have a whole other post related to this about some specific in game events so i will link it here when im done writing that...#but for now this is just a brain dump of some things ive been thinking of when i think about his story #i really love ascended astarion tbh and i find his path really cathartic and validating when it comes to trauma responses #but i also love and appreciate the way that the game shows how spawn astarion hurts and has to hurt in order to heal #idk i just really enjoy his character and both paths and i haven't been viewing them as 'good' or 'bad' paths/endings #and just wanted to share my thoughts and framing for how i approach him :)

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