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Mel 🌱 he/him 🌱 artist 🚂 18 B.A sociology + anthropology student 🦠Art tag #my art 🦠Art I love #mellery 🦠Archives #meluscripts

[reggiestein]

Metal

[awetfrog]

mania/apathy domestic burakhovsky :""""^)

[inkedberries]

i'd like to think that daniil was adopted by a stray cat back at the capital. being a single man living in a small apartment with a balcony, he's prime real estate.

[awetfrog]

the autism has won

[jqjqjqj]

inspiration from the savkuev's painting "the death of the hero"

[warren-keplers-funk-band]

alternative torse reaction to maxwell's joke

[unseenbox]

Sorry i simply think it is very sweet that brennan wanted to make his friends laugh so badly he accidentally made his campaign's finale too silly the second smiling Richard Nixon walked out and they all lost it. Like. The intrepid heroes are the sweetie-est actually.

[toqonym]

hj's first words to lavonte

[the-znoze]

i love these freaks

[foxdoodles]

the prince of purpee, oregon

[ispeaksforthetrees]

Just watched the new ccod ep and Maya is valid if not correct to be hesitant to work with the vamps.

HJ and LaVonte are TECH MOGELS who will surely have a footprint online you can find with a google search (you can’t tell me they don’t LOVE LinkedIn) who show up in your town and start throwing suspicious amounts of money around. And yeah the projects they’re funding are good but it’s not clear why they’re here. Is this a long con to buy land for a data center? Do they want to turn Purpee into some company town for their business that’s been buying up real estate around town? It seems possible with the information she has. Even if that’s not the case who’s to say they won’t add a bunch of stuff for hype but leave and pull the PRIVATE TECH MONEY they’re using to pay for it leaving you back in the ditch.

On top of that they bought your partners family home that was stolen from them and that’s just annoying even if they didn’t know that’s what they did.

On top of all that they might eat you if you piss them off and you’re pretty sure they’ve eaten a couple people in your town already.

My mid-size town anarchist and leftist friends wouldn’t even be as cooperative as she’s being with the information she has (darkness man and bat child would be welcomed tho).

Given the info we have about the vamps and the meta knowledge of the players of course we’re on their side but Mayas right imo. She’s not even saying no she’s saying I need to know why you’re doing this and what’s going on which is valid for anyone you want to do long term organizing work with. It’s good opsec! Hell it’s good opsec practice with the punks you meet at protests let alone with Silicon Valley types now suddenly really interested in public transit in a town when they own all the busses and set the routes.

I think it makes an interesting conflict this season that brings up real challenges in local organizing while still allowing for comedy. I really like this season overall and these are really fun characters.

[inconceptual-nonsense]

Maybe a hot take ig but all the people who are hating on Maya for not trusting the coterie have to be lacking media literacy or flagrantly misogynist. She's a queer woman of color who's hometown is being dismantled and sucked dry of all its funding by rich white people and then fucking CAPATLIST VAMPIRES show up and destabilize the power structure of the entire town. She knows the coterie could kill her or anyone she loves if they wanted to, so of course she's combative with them, of course she doesn't trust them at all.

[vaguedisapproval]

people hating on maya, because she doesn't immediately trust the millionaire vampires who've killed/been responsible for the death of several people within the town??? what are we even doing here guys? did we forget that the coterie were initially sent to purpee as a punishment, and were tasked with taking over the town? how 2 of the members were exploring options outside of purpee, while claiming that they wanted to make purpee the new rome?

of-fucking-course she's going to be suspicious of them! this is the town she loves, and she doesn't want to take down the old guard, just to replace them with a new batch of rich vampires. she cares so much for the people of purpee, and building community, and she's absolutely in the right for questioning the motives of these new people, who are buying up equity in a lot of the towns amenities. and asking hj to invest his money into the credit union-you guys understand that she doesn't get that money right? she's asking them to actually put down roots in purpee, and to show her they're here to stay, in exchange for her help and cooperation.

and to the people calling her certain names, please check your language when talking about this brown lesbian, because some of y'all are falling ass backwards into some pretty gross bigotry.

[bardwhobleedshope]

HJ on SSRIs is just what happens when you put someone who is bipolar 1 on depression meds. Like, this is what being on the wrong meds does to your manic episodes, actually.

[sunnywritesfics]

Thinking about the fact that LaVonte was turned sometime in the 80s, likely during the height of the AIDs crisis. During a time of rampant homophobia which was even more brutal for men of color.

Thinking about the fact that LaVonte waits by the creek for HJ, punches him out *immediately* and then expects the same in return. The disappointment and borderline disgust he feels when HJ doesn't reciprocate. Contextualized by the fact that their favorite movie is American Psycho-- a film about a 1980s *closeted* business man who embraces violence as a means of trying to define his masculinity.

Thinking about the fact that maybe LaVonte has found comfort in his intimacy with HJ *because* there is plausible deniability when it comes to romance. And when Maya threatens that and HJ doesn't push back it threatens the safe ambiguity LaVonte relies on.

[fly-chicken]

Imagine: you’re a college student. You got into Stanford. You have to stay in Purpee to take care of your grandfather. You have two new bosses who only operate at night. They have paid to move your grandfather into the nice retirement home. They have enough money to buy a bar and a new house in cash on day 2 in town.

You walk out from visiting your grandfather and there’s the hottest man you’ve ever seen in a tree. He’s got a mullet and a denim vest and no shirt. There’s also a horse in the tree. This man seems upset with you. He wants you to get on his horse with him, there is no saddle

You’re Tyler Morimoto and this is just your average night in Purpee now.

[rabdoidal]

I’ve been thinking about episode 7 of City Council of Darkness and about Lavonte reacting the way he did to Maya assuming he and HJ were a couple.

Lavonte and HJ represent exact tropes of homosexuality and vampirism of the 1980s; by the 80s, vampires had shifted from countryside landed gentry hiding away in musty castles to urbanised capitalists - the setting changes, but they still benefit from the toil of others as the bourgeoisie against the proletariat (Morrissette, 2013). At the same time, people moving to cities during the industrial revolution to work formed proletariat communities of their own, including homosexuals that left their homes in search of a better life; the city was different than their small-knit towns where everyone knew everyone, and gave them freedom. By the 80s HIV/AIDs crisis, horror had synthesised vampires and homosexuality to be intertwined urban concepts; for members of these groups (homosexuals/vampires), there is an element of hunting or pursuing a partner (cruising/finding a victim), exchanging fluids (cum/blood), and those fluids put you at risk of sickness or death (AIDs/vampirism) (Clark, 2022). There is, further, the idea of “turning someone” - this is framed as a bad thing by out-members, but contains nuance within the community. They are both seductive. They are both abnormal. You should warn your children about (homosexuals/vampires), do not let your daughter move to the city, or she will become a (homosexual/vampire). Within horror, vampires began to be queer coded; Daughters of Darkness (1971), The Hunger (1983), Fright Night (1985), The Lost Boys (1987).

HJ is the exemplar of the 80s vampire - he is a businessman with immense power, he is slick, he is clean shaven and well dressed, he is a confirmed bachelor. He is coded as (homosexual/vampire), and it’s interesting to think about whether Lavonte pursued HJ because he was a vampire, or because HJ was a man. It is risky for either of those factors to be what makes him appealing, but the desire alongside the disorder is what makes it a (homosexual/vampire) love story - it would be horrifying to want someone while also being terrified of what they can do to you. It completely makes sense to me that Lavonte, even though Lou played it as a joke, would have reservations about people thinking he was gay. Being gay in the 80s meant being dirty, meant being sick, meant being less masculine or respected, meant being the “other,” regardless of if he’s gay or not (Clark, 2022). Even though I see Lavonte as being totally accepting, being gay himself would be an admission of guilt in some way. Lavonte is focused, charismatic, and doesn’t like hearing “no” - if someone implied he seduced HJ to gain vampirism, I think that would be his nightmare.

Truly, even though none of their 80s-gay-vampirism coding was intentional, and even though Lou and Ally were playing up the miscommunication as a joke, I think it's interesting to see how character moments make logical sense within meta-horror. It’s been a great season so far.

Clark, Ian (2022) "Infectious Queers: HIV/AIDS and the Vampiric Body in Interview with the Vampire (1994)," Journal of Dracula Studies: Vol. 24: No. 1, Article 4. DOI: 10.70013/n1p5h7g4 Available at: https://research.library.kutztown.edu/dracula-studies/vol24/iss1/4

Fullilove MT, Wiley J, Fullilove RE 3rd, Golden E, Catania J, Peterson J, Garrett K, Siegel D, Marin B, Kegeles S, et al. Risk for AIDS in multiethnic neighborhoods in San Francisco, California. The population-based AMEN Study. West J Med. 1992 Jul;157(1):32-40. PMID: 1413740; PMCID: PMC1021901. 

Heller J. Rumors and Realities: Making Sense of HIV/AIDS Conspiracy Narratives and Contemporary Legends. Am J Public Health. 2015 Jan;105(1):e43-e50. doi: 10.2105/AJPH.2014.302284. PMID: 25393166; PMCID: PMC4265931.

Morrissette, J. J. (2013). Marxferatu: The Vampire Metaphor as a Tool for Teaching Marx’s Critique of Capitalism. PS: Political Science & Politics, 46(3), 637–642. doi:10.1017/S1049096513000607