Janaina Medeiros
JBB: An Artblog!
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Today's Document
almost home
祝日 / Permanent Vacation
he wasn't even looking at me and he found me
Jules of Nature
Origami Around
DEAR READER
Aqua Utopia｜海の底で記憶を紡ぐ
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roma★
ellievsbear
Keni
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Cosmic Funnies
PUT YOUR BEARD IN MY MOUTH
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@lilithiel
Modern Vampires - Short #3
Art by LilithielGames at DeviantArt
Vampire: dramatically corners target in a dark alley "I am the night. I have walked this earth for centuries. I have seen empires fall and oceans dry."
Alysia: dropping from the fire escape "Yeah, and you still owe my client $400 for the Airbnb damages in Prague. Pay up or get dusted, Vlad."
Rendered in DAZ Studio with Filatoon shaders
Modern Vampires - Short #2
Being a dhampir assassin in 2026 means 10% of Alysia's job is actual hand-to-hand combat, and 90% is trying to get TSA to believe that her custom titanium stakes are just "really aggressive tent pegs."
Image by LilithielGames at DeviantArt.
They're just tent pegs. And she goes camping a LOT.
Mythology Musing – Eastern Europe's Strigoi & The Dhampir
You literally cannot talk about vampires without bowing to Eastern Europe. Romania and the Balkans didn’t just give us the aesthetic; they gave us the corporeal revenants known as strigoi and moroi (Johnson, 2001), as well as their ultimate predators: the dhampir.
What I appreciate about Eastern European lore is how decisively unglamorous it is. You didn't become a strigoi by being bitten by a sexy aristocrat. Historically, legends of the undead returning to terrorize their families were often born out of mass hysteria surrounding tuberculosis (consumption) epidemics, where the unexplained spread of the disease was blamed on the restless dead (Buzea, n.d.). Death is a bureaucratic nightmare, and if society doesn't process it correctly, boom! You're a bloodsucker.
But the folklore also provided a hyper-specific cure: the dhampir. Born from the union of a vampire father and a human mother, the dhampir was historically considered the only being capable of seeing and destroying invisible vampires, turning the monster's own cursed bloodline into a community's greatest weapon (McClelland, 2006).
To combat the undead, villagers would hire these dhampir for chaotic, desperate rituals, wrestling unseen forces, exhuming bodies, and burning hearts. There is something tragic about the living making as much noise as possible just to drown out the quiet creeping of death. It’s the original goth impulse: responding to the horror of mortality with dramatic, ritualistic theater, guided by someone who walks between both worlds. Dhampir have made it into popular culture with Blade (Marvel), Alucard (Castlevania), D (Vampire Hunter D), and the Dungeons and Dragons and Pathfinder roleplaying games. And yes, this body of folklore and pop culture is why Alysia, our favorite fictional UdA assassin, is a dhampir: you need someone born of the dark to effectively fight it.
Strigoi Folklore (Wikipedia)
Moroi - Living Vampires (Wikipedia)
Dhampir (Wikipedia)
Schneider, F. Wesley, Beltrán, Whitney, et al. (2021) Van Richten's Guide to Ravenloft.
Johnson, P. (2001). Count Dracula and the Folkloric Vampire.
Buzea, T. (n.d.). How a Book Changed a Nation.
McClelland, B. A. (2006). Slayers and Their Vampires: A Cultural History of Killing the Dead.
Art by LilithielGames at DeviantArt.
D is for Dhampir
Twilight in the Valley is OUT NOW. 🌿🎻✨
Even creatures of the night need to go touch grass sometimes.
If our recent releases were the soundtrack for wandering through neon streets or misty dreams at 3 AM, our new EP, Twilight in the Valley, is what happens when we stumble out of the crypt, discover the Shire, and decide to stay for second breakfast.
For this project, we stepped away from the heavy darkwave synths and driving basslines. Think rich acoustic strings, gentle earthy melodies, and the kind of pastoral, fantasy-inspired warmth that makes you want to live in a house with a round green door. It’s a peaceful acoustic journey through lush, green valleys right as the sun dips below the horizon. A deliberate transition from tension to sleep.
Sometimes, immortality is about resting in a quiet meadow before the hunt begins again.
Pour yourself a cup of tea, light a beeswax candle, and let us take you somewhere beautiful.
Stream Twilight in the Valley everywhere now.
Image by LilithielGames at DeviantArt.
UdA Survival Guide – LED Headlights Are a Hate Crime
A formal complaint against modern automotive engineering. 🚗☀️
Who decided that every new SUV needed headlights powered by the raw, unfiltered energy of a dying star?
For centuries, the night belonged to us. Now, you can be enjoying a peaceful midnight stroll through the cemetery, only to be absolutely flash-banged by a 2024 Honda Civic turning the corner. To our photosensitive members (vampires, deep-dweller ghouls, and certain fae): these LED high-beams can cause mild to moderate smoldering.
How to cope:
Polarized sunglasses at night are no longer just an aesthetic choice; they are PPE. Wear them.
Invest in SPF 100 and wear protective clothing.
If hit by a high-beam, do not hiss and cloak your face in a velvet cape. Simply yell, "TURN OFF YOUR $%^*# BRIGHTS!" like a normal, irritated mortal. Blend in.
TURN OFF YOUR BRIGHTS!!
Lore Drop: The Actual, Literal Origins of The Undead Association 🦇💻
Before we started making darkwave ethereal music, and way before we were indulging in mythology deep-dives, The Undead Association had a different, fanciful and rather ... pixelated life.
The Undead Association was born in the mid-90s, amid the screech of dial-up internet, and the absolute cultural reset that was reading Anne Rice’s Interview with the Vampire for the first time.
You might know the feeling. You read about Louis and Lestat wandering through New Orleans, draped in velvet and existential dread, and suddenly your brain chemistry is permanently altered. We looked at that dramatic, tragic (toxic?), deeply codependent immortal lifestyle, shivered, and thought, "Yes. We need to organize these people."
(Thanks to our sister-in-law Anne for introducing us to Louis and Lestat.)
Thus, The Undead Association was born. But not as a band. As a roleplaying guild.
If you are an internet elder of a certain age, please bow your head in respect for the AOL Free Form Gaming Forum (FFGF). The freeform, text-based roleplaying in Red Dragon Inn is where UdA took its first breaths. We were out there typing paragraphs of gothic prose in chat rooms and rolling 2d20 in deathmatches while someone's mom yelled to get off the computer so they could use the landline. It was a chaotic time to explore edgy creativity.
Over the decades, as the internet evolved, so did the Undead Association. UdA packed up its metaphorical coffins and migrated through the digital ether, setting up shop in basically every major MMORPG that would tolerate antiheroes.
And honestly? We never really stopped.
If you happen to wander the roads of Azeroth in World of Warcraft today—specifically on the Wyrmrest Accord server—keep an eye out. The Undead Association guild is still active, still heavily invested in the lore, and still wearing too much transmog black.
From text-based AOL chat rooms to Wyrmrest Accord to releasing darkwave albums... immortality really is just about rebranding every few decades. 🍷✨
//roll 2d20
Mythology Musing – The Bible & The First Night Demon
Let’s talk origins. The concept of the "vampire" didn't just pop out of nowhere in Victorian England. The fear of nocturnal, life-draining entities goes back to the dawn of written text, rooted deeply in ancient Babylonian and Assyrian mythology before being incorporated into early Jewish folklore (Goldblum, 2021).
The Witch of Endor (1 Samuel 28) suggests that necromancy and speaking to the dead has been a taboo obsession for millennia. Death was never meant to be the end of the conversation.
In Isaiah 34:14, we get a reference to Lilith, depicted as a night demon who dwells in the desolate desert (Goldblum, 2021). Over centuries of Jewish legend, Lilith transitioned into a fiercely independent spirit, often characterized as a beautiful but deadly nocturnal entity or succubus who preyed upon the unprotected (Jacoby, 1987). Death and the night were never meant to be empty. They were populated by entities that explained the unexplainable tragedies of the ancient world.
It is no coincidence that the name Lilith has been reclaimed by modern gothic and witchy culture as a symbol of dark, unapologetic feminine power. When society tells you to fear the dark, sometimes the most empowering thing you can do is become the creature waiting in it. It’s a name that carries immense weight.
Personally, it was a hell of a name for Lillith to grow up with. We're twins. She was born first so she got branded with that name and endured being called the devil's child by an in-law's mother, and was called the Antichrist in high school. But she owns it very well now.
Mythology Musing – The Bible & The First Night Demon
Let’s talk origins. The concept of the "vampire" didn't just pop out of nowhere in Victorian England. The fear of nocturnal, life-draining entities goes back to the dawn of written text, rooted deeply in ancient Babylonian and Assyrian mythology before being incorporated into early Jewish folklore (Goldblum, 2021).
The Witch of Endor (1 Samuel 28) suggests that necromancy and speaking to the dead has been a taboo obsession for millennia. Death was never meant to be the end of the conversation.
In Isaiah 34:14, we get a reference to Lilith, depicted as a night demon who dwells in the desolate desert (Goldblum, 2021). Over centuries of Jewish legend, Lilith transitioned into a fiercely independent spirit, often characterized as a beautiful but deadly nocturnal entity or succubus who preyed upon the unprotected (Jacoby, 1987). Death and the night were never meant to be empty. They were populated by entities that explained the unexplainable tragedies of the ancient world.
It is no coincidence that the name Lilith has been reclaimed by modern gothic and witchy culture as a symbol of dark, unapologetic feminine power. When society tells you to fear the dark, sometimes the most empowering thing you can do is become the creature waiting in it. It’s a name that carries immense weight.
Personally, it was a hell of a name for Lillith to grow up with. We're twins. She was born first so she got branded with that name and endured being called the devil's child by an in-law's mother, and was called the Antichrist in high school. But she owns it very well now.
Mythology Musing – Celtic Roots & The Irish Dracula
Bram Stoker was Irish, and frankly, it shows. Long before Dracula, pre-Christian Celtic Ireland gave us the unnerving legend of the Abhartach (Game, n.d.).
Folklore from the fifth and sixth centuries describes the Abhartach as a tyrannical dwarf king and dark sorcerer who repeatedly rose from his grave at night to feast on the blood of his subjects (Game, n.d.). The only way to stop him? Slain with a wooden sword, buried upside down, and trapped beneath a massive stone. Vampirism in these early stories was closely linked to visceral, prehistoric fears surrounding blood as the ultimate source of human vitality (Buzea, n.d.). The veil between life and death has always been terrifyingly thin, especially around Samhain.
There is a deeply auditory element to Celtic horror that gets overlooked. The ancient Celts were oral storytellers, meaning these monsters lived in the breath and the voice. When we pluck the strings of a Celtic lap harp or weave sweeping ambient layers into our tracks, we are trying to capture that exact, ancient chill—the feeling of cold wind tickling a burial mound.
The Abhartach (Wikipedia)
Samhain and the Celtic Underworld (Wikipedia)
Game, P. B. (n.d.). The History of Vampire Folklore.
Buzea, T. (n.d.). How a Book Changed a Nation.
Modern Vampires - Short #1
Art by LilithielGames at DeviantArt
Plot Twist: We're Actually a Band. 🎸✨
Okay, so maybe the "HR for Vampires" thing is just our aesthetic (for legal reasons, we cannot confirm nor deny our own mortality).
Allow us to reintroduce ourselves. We are The Undead Association: a dark, ethereal musical duo comprised of Eve and Lillith. Yes, those are our real names.
Think driving basslines, haunting harmonies, and synths that sound like they were recorded in an abandoned gothic cathedral at 3 AM. If you like music that makes you want to wander through rainy neon-lit streets or a foggy graveyard in a velvet cloak while contemplating the fleeting nature of existence... you're in the right place. Stream our music now. Let us haunt your playlists.
UdA Survival Guide – The 30-Year Wealth Transfer
PSA for our immortal members regarding modern banking. 🏦🦇
We at The Undead Association cannot stress this enough: you cannot keep the same checking account open for 150 years. The IRS has algorithms now. They will notice if your savings account has been compounding interest since the Hoover administration.
Gone are the days when you could just bury a chest of gold in the woods. Modern survival requires administrative agility. Every 30 to 40 years, you must execute the "Eccentric Recluse" maneuver: fake your own demise and legally bequeath your entire estate to your completely fabricated, out-of-state "nephew" (who is also you, wearing a different haircut and contact lenses).
Need help drafting a watertight, legally binding fake will? We have a warlock on retainer who specializes in estate law and forgery.
Welcome to The Undead Association (UdA) 🦇
Let’s address the elephant in the crypt. Yes, we know you’re out there. Yes, we know modern society wasn't built for those of us who perceive time in centuries rather than fiscal quarters.
The Undead Association is your premier support network for post-mortal integration. Think of us as HR, but for vampires, ghouls, and the occasionally resurrected. Whether you need help setting up a nocturnal bank account, or simply finding a roommate who won't ask why you keep bags of O-negative in the crisper drawer, we are here.
Life after death doesn't have to be a waking nightmare. We can help. (Unless you're a zombie who refuses to moisturize. Then you're on your own.)
TW: Miscarriage
When I was 7 weeks pregnant for the first time, I was 26 years old and kind of high risk, so I was seeing my oby/gyn weekly. I had started bleeding and they did an ultrasound, and the sad look on the nurse's face said everything to me. She told me there was no longer a heartbeat, and I started crying.
She tried to reassure me, saying that sometimes these things happen, but that there was a risk this was a molar pregnancy.
I didn't know what that meant, and she explained it was basically an embryo that develops into a tumor, possibly cancerous. She told me I'd have to take pills to ensure the miscarriage was completed, and have a D&C, and I'd have to have my hormones monitored for weeks before I could try getting pregnant again.
So I swallowed my tears and scheduled the D&C and went to the pharmacy with red eyes to get the pills that would finish the job my body had started.
I went home and took the pills, including the 800 mg of Motrin they gave me to help with the pain. It didn't even begin to touch the agony. It was a cramping, twisting, sickening pain, the worst I'd ever experienced. I was bleeding profusely and spent most of the night in the bathroom, crying alone until my throat was sore.
In the morning I took another 800 mg of Motrin and headed to the hospital, where they gave me a Valium and had me change into a gown and wait.
The D&C was excruciating and it was heart-rending. The OR staff were uncomfortable and sad. My twin heard me moaning and crying in pain from the waiting room, and I think she was shaken because she'd never heard me make that sound before. As I would learn when I ultimately successfully carried my daughter to term, that pain from the D&C was worse than what childbirth.
But without that procedure, abortion pills and a D&C, I would have gotten sepsis and/or cancer. I would have died. So yes, abortion is healthcare.
Anyone who thinks that abortion pills or a D&C are a pain-free and easy walk in the park is just fucking stupid.
I had always thought abortion would be an easy choice for me and a simple thing, but when it came down to it, there was nothing simple or easy about it at all, even though it was that or die.
The fact that women in the same situation in other states are dying because a man or worse, a governmental entity, has made the choice for her, is deplorable and depraved.
Vote like your life depends on it, because it does.
I was diagnosed with ulcerative colitis 16 years ago this month.
I was 30 years old, the mother of a three-year-old, and suddenly my life was not turning out the way I’d hoped at all. Learning to be a parent along with learning how to live with a chronic illness while working at a fast-paced, full-time job was a huge struggle.
What is Ulcerative Colitis?
Ulcerative colitis is a chronic inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) that affects the lining of the large intestine. It’s an autoimmune disease that causes a range of symptoms, including abdominal pain, diarrhea, fatigue, nausea and weight loss. IBD can lead to serious complications, such as bowel obstruction, fistulas, and cancer. The pain, discomfort, and uncertainty that come with this condition can be overwhelming.
There is no cure for ulcerative colitis, but there are treatments that can help to manage the symptoms and improve quality of life. In 2022, I was fortunate enough to try a novel combination of treatments that works well for me, with almost no side effects.
Most people with IBD are not so fortunate and spend years trying to find effective treatments, treading a narrow path between reducing inflammation and dangerous side-effects.
Crohn’s Colitis Canada
I first learned about Crohn's Colitis Canada via social media. They provide information and support to patients, their families, and healthcare professionals. Their webinars have been invaluable to me in coming to terms with this disease. They are friendly, approachable, helpful and down-to-earth.
But of course, they also fund research.
Crohn’s and Colitis Canada is one of the world’s largest non-governmental funders of IBD research. They invest in the most promising research projects on Crohn’s disease and ulcerative colitis, ensuring that every donor dollar reaches as far as possible by leveraging funding opportunities with bodies such as the Canadian Institutes of Health Research. They also help allocate a greater pool of funds towards initiatives targeting the prevention and cures of IBD and improving the quality of life for those who live with them.
Their research funding powers the discovery process that is driving new treatments and cures, finding causes and triggers, helping manage symptoms, getting the best care, educating professionals, discovering novel treatments, and supporting early career IBD researchers.
In 2021, they invested $4.7 million in research projects and initiatives supported by major hospitals and universities.
How You Can Help
Please consider making a donation to Crohn's Colitis Canada. Your contribution will help fund research that could one day lead to a cure for IBD, and it will provide much-needed support to those of us living with this chronic illness.
You can donate via Tiltify at https://tiltify.com/@sullivantwins/mrgleh
Every single dollar counts. Thank you for your support!
