Finding out AI companies are chewing through - literally, they’re pulping and burning them as they go - millions of books often including 1/1s and old texts that cannot be reprinted
Meanwhile there’s always some dipshit telling me AI is the future and we’ve got to just let companies erase human history and literature so they can train their abomination machines to pretend to think like people because a judge said it’s fine
Torment Nexus : "an idea that is so bad and dangerous in theory and practice that its indistinguishable from capitalist satire".
Luddite event : After the creation of textile machines (which produced fabric at a lower quality but faster rate while being dangerous to operate), textile mills fired a huge amount of their workforce leading to the remaining workers becoming overworked. A Luddite event thus in this context is "an innovation that is exaggerated to excuse mistreatment of the workforce".
whenever a mutual spamlikes me and then Doesn't reblog anything. i get kind of Sad 😢😢 cause it means NONE❌❌❌ of my offerings were Pleasing to them 😢😢☹️☹️☹️☹️☹️☹️
earlier today i told an acquaintance in passing that i'll often be in the middle of a novel and think "man i wish this shit were more ambiguous" and had to reiterate twice that i wasn't being sarcastic before they believed me, so this post is to say: i love when writers don't bother to explain everything, i love when stories end uncertain and unsettling, i love being required to think as a reader, i love when stuff makes no damn sense, no i'm not kidding
My take on the Incestuous Subtext, Codependency, and Displaced Intimacy in The Vampire Diaries Universe
Warning: Incestuous Subtext / Pseudo-Incest:
1. The Mikaelson Family: "Always and Forever" as a Marriage Vow
The Mikaelson siblings aren't just close; they are an intensely inwardly directed unit. Isolated from humanity for 1,000 years, they have replaced external social norms with a claustrophobic trauma bond.
Klaus and Rebekah: The "Helicopter Incestuous Boyfriend"
Klaus doesn't treat Rebekah like a sister; he treats her like his property . Fans and critics alike have noted that Klaus acts like a controlling boyfriend rather than an older brother .
The Control: He uses daggering literally paralyzing her and putting her in a box for decades whenever she tries to find love outside the family. This ensures she never emotionally matures, keeping her in the state of a spoiled teenager who is perpetually dependent on his approval .
The Subtext of Physicality: The show leans into "belligerent sexual tension" between them . They share an intense physicality constant physical touches and eye contact eye fucking . Klaus’s obsession is pathological; he believes she belongs to him, and he systematically murders or ruins every man she’s ever loved to ensure no one takes his place .
Klaus and Elijah: Feeding Together and Displaced Intimacy
Klaus and Elijah’s relationship is the foundation of the show’s "Always and Forever" pact, which functions more like a trap than a promise.
The Ritual of Feeding: The intimacy of their bond is frequently showcased through shared violence. A prime example is in season 3, where Elijah and Klaus are depicted feeding on a woman together. In vampire lore, blood-sharing is "vampire naked cuddling" an intimate exchange of bodily fluids that is explicitly sexual in the novels. Sharing the same victim simultaneously acts as a surrogate for sexual intimacy between the brothers
Elijah’s Pattern with Klaus’s Lovers: Elijah has a weird thing for pursuing women with ties to Klaus . From Tatia (the original doppelgänger) to Katerina (Katherine) and finally Hayley (Klaus's "baby mama"), Elijah consistently sleeps with his brother's lovers . This pattern is often read as a form of displaced intimacy the brothers can only reach each other through the women they share.
2. The Salvatore Brothers: Triangulated Desire
In the Vampire Diaries books and show, Stefan and Damon’s rivalry over Katherine and Elena is a classic example of triangulated desire
The Bite as Sex: The original L.J. Smith books are much more explicit about the "vampire bite = sex" metaphor . Damon compelling young women to offer their bodies for feeding was written with overtly sexual overtones . When the brothers both feed on and sleep with the same women, they are essentially replicating their relationship with each other through a third party.
Sharing Lovers as Intimacy: The need to sleep with the same people Katherine Pierce and then Elena Gilbert isn’t just a love triangle; it’s a way for the brothers to remain the central focus of each other’s lives. Damon’s pursuit of Elena was initially motivated by his envy of Stefan and a desire to cause Stefan the most amount of pain
The episode "1912" serves as a masterclass in the brothers' dark co-dependency. Damon attempts to help Stefan by teaching him how to enjoy being a vampire, a process that involves shared feeding and blood-lust. Damon’s dialogue in this episode "Whenever you go too far, I will be there to pull you back" is framed as a redeeming statement of brotherly love, yet the visual and thematic execution suggests a dark initiation into a shared, deviant lifestyle.
Damon admits he regretted letting Stefan fall "over the rails" in 1912, not just as a brother, but as the "one person" who could understand Stefan's true nature. The "Wonder Twin Powers" line is used by Damon to remind Stefan of the "great team" they made, a phrase that masks the horrific reality of their shared "Ripper" history
3. The Marcel-Rebekah Taboo: Aunt and Nephew
The relationship between Marcel and Rebekah is perhaps the most canon incestuous relationship in the show, despite them not being blood-related .
The Family Hierarchy: Klaus rescued Marcel as a boy and raised him as a son. This makes Marcel a member of the Mikaelson family by adoption, and Rebekah, as Klaus's sister, is effectively Marcel's Aunt .
Grooming Subtext: Marcel grew up in a house where he watched the uncomfortable and borderline-incestuous dynamics between Klaus and Rebekah . He admitted to having a crush on Rebekah as a child, and Rebekah, despite being the adult, did not set boundaries . The "Always and Forever" vow ensures that even as a lover, Marcel is treated as an extension of Klaus’s family rather than an independent partner .
The 1903 Siring: Pity and Abandonment
Lily Salvatore met Enzo in 1903 on a ship to New York. Enzo was dying of consumption (tuberculosis) and was being denied passage. Lily "took pity" on him and turned him into a vampire, effectively saving his life but also "making him a monster" before immediately abandoning him as she was trapped in a prison world.
For over a century, Enzo viewed Lily with a mixture of resentment and obsessive devotion, often calling her a dreadful woman while simultaneously seeking the connection only a sire can provide. This mirrors Marcel's upbringing by the Mikaelsons; though Klaus was his primary parental figure, Rebekah was his aunt and a part of the family that raised him, making their eventual romance a violation of the family unit's sanctity.
Maternal Energy vs. Romantic Chemistry
Upon their reunion, the dynamic between Lily and Enzo was explicitly described as starting off maternal. Lily took Enzo under her wing, and their bond was rooted in the fact that she was the only person who had ever shown him kindness. However, as the season progressed, this shifted into what actors described as a kinship with deep-rooted chemistry that left the door open for romance.
Fans found the eventual kiss between Enzo and Lily weird and out of place, precisely because Lily possessed such strong maternal energy toward him. the kiss felt like a son kissing his mother, further complicated by the fact that Enzo was a contemporary and husband-coded best friend to Lily's biological son, Damon. This displacement—where the mother's lover is effectively a surrogate for her sons creates a psychological loop of abandonment and replacement that defines the Salvatore matriarchy.
The Gemini Coven: The "Merge" and Siphoning as Ritualized Intimacy
The Gemini Coven introduces a new layer of taboo through "The Merge" a ritualized soul-absorption that requires twins to participate in a violent, highly personal ceremony at age 22. This ritual, and the act of siphoning magic that powers it, is frequently analyzed as a metaphor for forced intimacy and the violation of bodily autonomy.
The Merge: Creepy, Rapey, and Non-Consensual
The Merge is described as a "curse" on the Gemini twins rather than a simple leadership tradition. It requires the two twins to hold hands and chant until the stronger twin "claims" the other's power, killing the weaker twin and absorbing their personality traits and soul. It's been labeled this process "creepy" and "rapey" because it is a non-consensual mystical law "baked into the bloodline" that forces twins into a life-or-death struggle for survival.
Siphoning: Tactile Contact and the "Glow"
Siphoning is a rare ability within the Gemini Coven that allows a witch without magic to "suck" or absorb it from other sources through tactile contact. In the series, this act is depicted with a "faint, red glow" and often involves intense physical dominance.
Kai and Jo: When Kai siphons his twin sister Jo, the act is often framed with unsettling intimacy. To "prove" she had taken her magic back, Kai placed his hands on Jo's cheeks and siphoned from her, a gesture that mimics a caress but functions as a theft of power.
The Sensation of Touch: Siphoning can be "painless" or "aggressive" depending on the intent of the siphoner. Kai, a "psychotic sadist," often chose to make the process agonizing, while younger siphoners like Josie and Lizzie learned to do it painlessly, highlighting that siphoning is an act of "energy/magic taking" that requires a specific, often forced, physical boundary-crossing.
And the ultimate thing about Katherine Pierce is that, while I'm certainly not gonna sit here and defend all of her actions, especially if we're taking real world morality into account, I think her role in the story as the "evil" counterpart to Elena's "good" says so much about TVD's problematic view of women. The majority of Katherine's actions are heinous, that's just an objective fact, and while Elena definitely has her bad moments (all of these characters are serial killers), they don't come close to stacking up to Katherine's, even if we just take the show's timeline into account, since they have so widely different life spans. However — and this is a big however — nearly all of Katherine's worst actions were completely necessary acts of survival. The hatred that both the characters and the narrative has for her stems from the opinion that Katherine should've just let herself be murdered. The fact that if she'd done this, she would've died at seventeen years old in a ritualistic sacrifice to give a 500 year old all powerful monster even more power, doesn't matter. She should've just accepted her tragic fate and laid down and died. The only good girl is a dead girl, indeed.
This stands out against the men of TVD, whose worst actions mostly come from feelings of hurt, anger or grief. Damon, Stefan, even Klaus, all come out of the show with a more sympathetic treatment from the narrative than Katherine. And the only reason Elena gets to remain both good and alive is because she constantly has other people commit atrocities to save her. Katherine didn't have that luxury. She had no one willing to kill other people or themselves to keep her alive. She was completely alone. So she had to do it herself. And they sent her to hell for it.
