C.Gray @grayravenartjournal - Tumblr Blog

The Vampire Lestat and the New Queer Cinema

For June 2026, the Criterion Collection streaming app put together a bloc of programming celebrating the New Queer Cinema* movement. Since The Vampire Lestat also premiered in June 2026, I spotted many homages/references to some of these films in The Vampire Lestat as I was watching both.

Putting the rest under a read more, because this got really long.

#interview with the vampire #the vampire lestat #vampire chronicles #vampires #new queer cinema #interesting thoughts

spocktheestallion

Every year Dracula daily revamps interest in the novel and every year I have to be reminded of the utter buffoonery and misogyny that pervades every modern adaptation that romanticizes Dracula and his predation of women in the name of being “subversive” while completely cutting out or sidelining his predation of men (namely Jonathan) because all of a sudden when he’s assaulting and robbing men of their agency it’s not sexy or sympathetic anymore and we can’t include Jonathan (one of the most interesting and unique and ACTUALLY subversive male characters in gothic literature) because he’s not “manly” enough

spocktheestallion

And let’s go into this further. Because what also pisses me off is people do this and defend it by claiming it gives the female characters (chiefly Mina) empowerment and agency where they didn’t before. But they DID! That’s the whole thing!!!! They had an astounding degree of agency and respect and happiness BEFORE Dracula came into their lives and robbed them of it.

Lucy lived happily with her loving mother, had her pick of three lovely suitors, was given full freedom to choose whom she would spend her life with and has that decision respected by all the men involved, who all admire and care for her so much that they remain devoted friends to her (and I mean REALLY genuine friends) up to and past the point of her death where they risk their lives to avenge her and put her soul to rest.

Mina is in an unusually healthy, loving, devoted marriage to a man she completely adores, again with a bright future ahead of them both. Jonathan constantly thinks of Mina, compares almost all women against her, and is absolutely utterly in love with her. Mina and Jonathan regularly subvert Victorian expectations of a married couple in that they deeply love and respect one another to the point of flouting “proper” Victorian customs by being affectionate out in public. In fact, the one time Jonathan decides to play the traditional man and ignores Mina’s wishes to leave her at home while he goes hunting vampires w the other men, he is IMMEDIATELY punished by the narrative! Draculas predation of Mina starts that night because she was left behind, and in response Jonathan affirms and reaffirms his total devotion to Mina above the other men for the rest of the story. In the third act of the novel while the team is trying to stop Mina’s slow turn to vampirism, Jonathan not only explicitly tells us the reader through his private journal entires that he will LITERALLY go against god if Mina is turned and damn himself to be by her side in hell rather than kill her if she becomes a vampire, he is unsubtle enough about it that the other men genuinely worry about where Jonathan’s loyalties will lie if they fail in killing Dracula and saving Mina.

So when adaptations pose that either of these women were just your typical trapped, bored, sexually frustrated poor Victorian traditional ladies looking for an out until bad boy Dracula comes to sexually liberate them…. Motherfucker they were ALREADY about as liberated as female characters written by a man in the 1800s could get. Lucy is introduced to us as a young woman flush with bright and happy futures and her pick of the litter for the life she wants to lead until Dracula kills her and takes that from her. Mina marries her childhood sweetheart who literally prioritizes her over God and is building a business with him before Dracula nearly ruins her life permanently.

Not only is claiming that dracula is an agent of the female characters agency just completely antithetical to his role in the original narrative as a blatant serial THEIF of women’s freedom, from the brides to the peasant mother to Lucy to Mina, it’s literally less subversive than the fucking source material

#dracula #vampires #interesting thoughts

they-bite

part of the fun of the original alien is the horror of the nostromo itself imo. it’s a cell of corporate greed ferrying narrowly-trained workers across barren space. it’s huge and yet claustrophobic, cockpits crammed with machinery giving way to yawning berths dripping chains and water. the supercomputer is named mother in a stroke of human anthropomorphization, but instead of providing comfort or protection, it’s only a courier between its creator and its wailing brood. ripley yells “mother! mother!” at a matronly-voiced computer that speaks calmly over her helplessness. the ship is full of endless details and patterns and unlabeled buttons and dials the audience can’t entirely make sense of; to do anything on the ship is a rigorous, technical process, and we must depend on the characters to know it. the internal mechanics of the ship are so alien that a literal alien can hide among the bits and bobs and not be noticed. it’s great.

pyreo

I'd like to add the appearance of the craft for anyone that hasn't seen it

Look at that thing. We get used to sci-fi where the spaceships try to look aerodynamic and cool, and the Nostromo went in the exact opposite direction. It is an entire industrial refinery floating through the void, matching the interior of overly complex panels, cramped spaces and chimneys dripping with water, chains dangling and clinking in the factory shafts.

It's enormous. It gives the impression of being understaffed by its sheer size - it doesn't seem to fit that a crew of seven, only two of whom are engineers, can be responsible for this towering manufactory, an implicit reference to the corporate mishandling at the core of the story.

It takes the symbol of antihuman greed - the factory with its barely paid, unsupported, physically endangered workers - and slaps it directly into space. It tells you that Weyland-Yutani did not invent exploitation, but is part of a repeating cycle that never ended even once we commodified travelling to the stars.

Its labyrinthine layout, exposed piping, its ridiculous size, it all gives the alien a perfect place to hide and hunt the crew, as if the alien turns the very ship against its passengers, which Ripley then discovers was an intentional collaboration from the start. Even the vent shafts they believe they can corner the alien in have an unforseen advantage in the alien's favour.

The alien doesn't want them, their employer doesn't want them, even their very ship doesn't want them, and it's the only thing between them and the vacant hostility of space.

foxgirlmindcrank

Small correction, this is the Nostromo. It's just this little bit that's out front. It's a commercial towing vessel for automated refineries, which is the massive thing behind it.

#alien 1979 #horror #alien #interesting thoughts #films

the-overthinktank

I feel like it's a really common trope to have a non-biological entity disgusted by squishy bio things like secretions and flesh and stuff but. Wouldn't they utterly lack revulsion to those things? The reason we are repulsed by things like blood and shit and corpses is because they are intimately connected to our bodies, are uncomfortable reminders of our animal mortality, can be vectors of harm, or are a signal of danger. A being made of energy, metal, or plastic does not have the same sympathetic connections to these things that we do, except as a kind of intellectual sympathy for what people they care about fear. Disgust is repulsive, and you can only repel something if it's close to you. I think the things that viscerally repel a non-biological mind are not going to be biological.

the-overthinktank

Hmm... Maybe not as extreme as a corpse, but if you handed someone composed of mostly metal an extremely corroded piece of copper, I could see them reacting like you just handed them a very moldy orange.

To reach "handed a decomposing roadkill squirrel" level, maybe give them something with identifiable parts similar to what is in their body, like corroded circuit boards, batteries, wire connectors. That's a more direct reminder of mortality.

mikkeneko

I remember yonks ago reading a Transformers fic where in order to accomplish something or other the human hero and the transformer buddies were investigating an abandoned salt mine, which the transformers found horrifying and disturbing due to the corrosive effect of salt on metal

hylianengineer

That's like the equivalent of a human walking into an abandoned uranium mine.

#interesting thoughts #abjection #transhumanism

and-fishing-equipment

in 2026 DO NOT ask yourself whether your art is GOOD

instead ask:

is it SINCERE

was it CATHARTIC

was it FUN TO MAKE

is it MADE BY ME

and don't forget to stay silly

luna-azzurra

If you're a new writer and you're asking yourself "is this too personal, is this too much, will people think this is weird" that feeling is the exact location of your actual voice. The stuff that makes you want to close the laptop is the stuff nobody else could write. The safe version is always worse. Always. I have never once read something and thought "this would have been better if it was a little less honest." go further. It's always go further.

arkangel6world

Sue de Beer 1997 - 2001

#interesting art #blood #sue de beer

sepublic

I do think it’s interesting how the novel Dracula is meant to be a modern setting from its perspective. It’s very much that genre of story about an ancient fantasy archetype finding itself in a modern setting, complete with the rules-lawyering that often comes with modern parodies (that isn’t to say the stories of Olde didn’t have fun with loopholes either though).

Except Dracula is a story that plays itself straight. The vampire himself is not stupid. He’s possibly the oldest vampire of all which means he upgraded from animal instinct and mindless echoes of past memories to someone who’s regained his critical thinking skills. The story begins because he’s already adapted to how the modern world works now by hiring a solicitor who understands modern laws.

He knows now that he doesn’t have to march into London with an army like he used to; He can just buy property and the laws of London are forced to respect that. Similarly he’s already experimented in and discovered loopholes to vampire rules and limitations; Vampires are bound by the permission of owners so he simply uses his solicitor to buy and own a bunch of properties. If he needs to be invited in, Dracula hypnotizes someone to let him in.

Vampires need to return to their grave every dusk/dawn (whichever comes sooner), which causes their coffin to act as an anchor that limits how far from it they can travel? Dracula simply rations the earth of his grave into fifty coffins and spreads them across London so his range becomes exponentially larger.

All of these things make the story almost come across as a deconstruction and it might just be! It’s just that Dracula the novel became such a trendsetter that people nowadays see it as playing things fully straight. It almost feels as if the novel is written with the idea that readers have a basic understanding of vampires and their rules, so part of the thrill comes in the revelation of how the titular vampire is working around these rules. Likewise I’ve heard it used to be a trope in English literature for a traveler to visit some foreign land with a monster and escape by going home. But here the foreign aspect of the story is just the first (and final) arc; The monster’s plan hinges on coming to the UK itself!

So yeah. Dracula isn’t stupid and he reflects the idea that people of the past had just as common sense as the rest of us, they just had access to less/inaccurate knowledge and things worked differently back then. Dracula would be like… That bit of someone showing a medieval peasant a meme as they comprehend it perfectly and aren’t even wowed by the Doritos. If Dracula was set in the 21st century he’d probably understand social media well enough to become an influencer if he wanted to, though the issue of being invisible in cameras wouldn’t help.

#interesting thoughts #dracula #vampires

vieneinpace

William Etty's Male Nude, with Arms Up-Stretched (1828) revamped by Astra Zero

#art #interesting art #queer artwork #astra zero #william etty

corporrealism

Saint Sebastian. 24 x 18 inches. Oil on Panel

#interesting art #queer art #trans art

cryptotheism

I'm fascinated by how the formatting of different social media sites affect how text is read.

For instance, a line break on Tumblr indicates a new idea.

cryptotheism

But a reblog break indicates that time has passed.

cryptotheism

neosatsuma

#ongoing research #tumblr formatting #tumblr meta #if I ever need it for research

galileosballs

This interview with Ncuti Gatwa crossed my dash again, and I was reminded of how much I like it. Because it makes the rare Third Argument for representation in fiction, the argument I think is the best, and I'm always happy to see it. I quote:

At times, Gatwa’s casting in those projects has been dismissed as an exercise in ‘box-ticking’. Gatwa scoffs. ‘First of all, you don’t know anything about me. Secondly, tick fcking boxes! People need to be fcking seen. What are you going to do, tell the same stories? Have the same people fronting things for all of eternity? Representation and inclusivity and branching out… it enriches us all. How embarrassing. You people with your tiny mindsets – open a book, look out the window and then f*ck off.’ (source)

What do I mean by the Third Argument? Well, I'm not sure I've ever made a post about this directly, but as far as I can see it, there are three main arguments for greater diversity in popular media. The first two are the most common, and they go like this:

It is good for media to be diverse because it is good for people to see people like them on screen. That is, the beneficiaries are marginalized people.

It is good for media to be diverse because it is good for people to see and learn about people who are not like them through art. That is, the beneficiaries are non-marginalized people, who then (hopefully) pass on the benefit by treating marginalized people better.

These two arguments are the source of a lot of debate here on ye olde tumblr. Despite both being arguments for representation, they pull in different directions. What counts as 'good' representation for the purposes of Argument 1 often would not be good for the purposes of Argument 2, and vice versa. Authentic versus sympathetic. Ugly or over-sanitized. You see this debate play out constantly. It's really hard for a piece of - say - queer media to do both at once.

But these debates tend to leave out Argument 3, the one that Gatwa is making above. And that argument cuts through a lot of this debate.

3. It is good for media to be diverse because art needs variety. The beneficiary of representation is art itself, absent any social effects that may or may not be present.

For this argument, diverse stories are intrinsically good. It is good to make art that's not just the same thing you've seen a hundred times before. Putting the kinds of people who don't often make it into mainstream media into your art is an extremely efficient way to make that happen. It's not the only method, but it's a really good method.

For representation to be 'good representation' according to Argument 3, all it needs to be is interesting. A story you haven't heard before, at least not in that medium. That which counts as 'bad representation' by the lights of this argument are stock characters, like the Eternally Patient Mother, the Gay Best Friend, the Wise Black Advisor. Perhaps there was a time in which these characters were new, but that time has long passed. There's no art in pulling a bog-standard character trope off the shelf. Show us a new kind of guy. The world is infinitely diverse. You're not going to run out. Telling the same stories with the same voices for all eternity, as Gatwa says, is boring. Even if there was nothing else wrong with it, this would be. Art isn't supposed to be boring.

And that's why Argument 3 is my favourite. I do want the world to be a better place, of course, and I think art is a part of that. But the main job of art is to be good as art. And diversity in all aspects of the production of art makes art better.

#interesting thoughts

raingardening

i think there is a phenomenon where sometimes a trans person will go “hmm. i am treated as a man when it is convenient for others, and a woman when it is convenient for others, and often as a freakish third thing excluded from the advantages of both. surely, because of the gender binary, the Other Type of trans person experiences the opposite: they reap the benefits of maleness and femaleness at once.” like babes no they can do it twice

epochryphal

+ "i see this person claims to identify as a freakish third thing. clearly this is a less-trans person larping with my oppression, whom i will now treat as either a man or a woman and as either cis or trans as i find convenient. #justified"

#interesting thoughts #new tag #queer community #trans

annabelle--cane

what I mean: "sexual intercourse" is as much a social construct as "romantic courtship," and you discover this very quickly as a queer person if you try to talk to able bodied straight cis people who literally think the only thing that counts as Actual Sex is penis-in-vagina penetration, like they call oral "foreplay" it's so dire. various people have a lot of vested interest in cleanly defining "sex" vs "not sex" for a whole slew of reasons (ex. censorship dodging and enforcing, conferring the social clout of virginity and prowess, finding and closing loopholes about premarital sex, deciding what relationships "count" as serious partnerships, ligating what is general assault vs sexual assault vs Something That's Definitely Probably Fine And Not Sexual At All, Actually, etc.), and it's really not something you can just fall back on as obvious common sense that people are dumb for questioning.

what I say: sex isn't real and you can't have it