I am sorry for my absence! My country's government is in shambles and I was arrested by the police! However I am back and ready to goon to William Solaire :)
Before the war, I lived with my parents, my brother, and my sister in the Shuja'iyya neighborhood of Gaza City. Our life was simple. We didnât have much, but we had enough. Our home wasnât big, but it was where we felt safe.
Every morning, my brother and sister went to school, and I went about my own daily routine. In the evenings, we would all sit together in the living room, talk about our day, and sometimes watch TV when the electricity was on. On weekends, we visited relatives, or just stayed home sharing food and conversations.
It wasnât a perfect life, but it was normal. We had our small joys family meals, birthdays, laughter, even the quiet moments when nothing special was happening. That life, as simple as it was, meant everything to us.
Our home between before and after đĽşđ
The Day Everything Changed
When the bombing started, our lives turned upside down overnight. During the first week of the war, we had to run from our home in Shuja'iyya. We left in a hurry, carrying almost nothing with us. At that moment, I didnât realize it would be the last time Iâd see our house the way it was.
We moved to the Rimal neighborhood, thinking maybe it would be safer there. But it was there that we received the news that broke us completely: our home the place that held all our memories, our laughter, our life had been destroyed. Flattened to the ground.
Everything we had worked for, every piece of furniture, every photo, every little thing that made up our life, was gone in a moment. It wasnât just walls and a roof it was the only place we felt safe, and now it was nothing but rubbleđđđ
The Ongoing Struggle
Since that day, weâve been on the move, never staying in one place for long. From Rimal to Al-Zawada, then to Rafah weâve been displaced four times already. And with every move, we carry less with us, because thereâs almost nothing left to carry.
Most nights we sleep on the floor, and sometimes in tents. The nights are freezing cold, and the days are unbearably hot. Thereâs no electricity, no clean water, no proper toilets. Even getting food has become a battle sometimes we wait for hours just to get a piece of bread to share.
We lost everything our jobs, our home, our income, and with it, a part of our dignity. What hurts the most is the constant fear. Every sound makes us wonder if itâs the next bomb, the next loss, the next goodbye.
We used to have dreams about the future. Now, all we dream about is making it to tomorrow alive đŞđ
As of today, April 15, 2025, the latest satellite images of our home show that it has been completely destroyed
Why We Are Asking for Help
We are the Anas family like many families in Gaza ordinary people who only wanted peace, a safe home, and a chance to live in dignity. But the war has taken everything from us: our home, our land, our jobs, our dreams, our stability⌠even our sleep.
It's hard to write this. It's hard to ask for help. But we are desperate.
How You Can Help
Please, if you are reading this, help us. Even a small donation could mean we can sleep under a real roof again, buy medicine, food, or clean water. It could help us bring back a little dignity to our lives.
We started a campaign to help us rebuild what the war destroyed. Every dollar makes a big difference.
* Our Goal: $40,000 USD
* Amount Raised So Far: [$22,236 USD]
We have collected $22,236 raised of $40,000 !đľđ¸
Update
I want to let you all know that my GoFundMe campaign has been closed by the platform. They decided to refund all donations back to the donors because of their strict policies.
But I cannot give up â my family still urgently needs support.
So, I have now moved the campaign to Chuffed, a trusted fundraising platform:
Hello everyone,
Please, if you can, donate again through this new link or share it with others. Every bit of help means so much to me and my family. đđ
You can donate through the official link:
Hello everyone,
Even $20 will make a big difference and save us!
If you cannot donate, please share this story. You might reach someone who can.
This isnât just a story. This is our life. And we're still living through it.
Thank you from the bottom of our hearts.
IMPORTANT: This campaign is real and verified. You can see all updates and amounts raised directly on the link.
You can check here so you can donate with confidenceđverified â
If you came from the tags , I want to reassure you, donât worry, because @gaza-evacuation-funds helps me to make the post reach the largest number of people
Oh piss off with the tags lmao. You know that's not what I'm saying.
My issue with Alexis is that she exists in the narrative not as a person, but as a flaw etched into the family portrait of the House of Solaire to make the men in it appear more whole. Her sin is the same as Williamâs (the violent, non-consensual theft of a life) yet where his is painted in grey, hers is unforgivable. William is allowed two decades of remorse, building a legacy and a family from his mistake. Alexis is granted no such depth. Her act is her entirety that defines her without context or the possibility of redemption. She is the Irredeemable Woman, a static symbol of evil against which the redeemable masculinity of the other characters is measured.
There's a trope calle fridging, where a female character's agency is useful only insofar as it inflicts the trauma upon a man. Sound familiar? Her narrative value is spent in a single, violent transaction, making her a plot device rather than a person. And for daring to exercise this shred of power, the narrative itself rises to punish her. William doesn't just disapprove; he magically neuters her, invoking a primal authority to strip her of any control over her own creation. It is a brutal, symbolic castration, ensuring the patriarchal order remains unchallenged.
Thereafter, she is ostracised, both spatially and narratively. Called a bitch and shunned. Rude as Porter but without the room to grow. The story of healing, found family, and complex bonds is told in a warm circle from which she is permanently excluded. Even the logic of the world conspires to diminish her, granting the younger, male Vincent a nebulous strength she somehow lacks, a fallacy in itself that ensures her inferiority is baked into the very mechanics of the world (I've done a whole separate post about how the vampire power scaling is a paradox in itself). In every way, Alexis is written as negative space. I love what she could be, but canon Alexis is a hollowed-out vessel for misogynistic tropes, defined only by her function to make the men around her seem more human.
I understand the story is male orientated because it's mainly one guy, but that makes it even more important to not let one of your only female characters with a speaking role be relegated to a blatant, walking bag of sexist tropes.
"i hope your favourite morally complex redacted character is so blatanly mischaracterized that erik deletes their entire existence." terrifying. entirely possible. it has happened before.
Okay I'll for sure get hate for this but honestly? I think that excuse was kind of bullshit. Why does it matter if a character is mischaracterised by your fandom? Is this not your story?
I feel like this sort of mentality (as in letting audience response dictate a story's direction) has had really bad ripple effects for the rest of a lot of modern storytelling, especially episodic based ones like this. Everything these days seems really tailored to what the majority of fans want to see, rather than daring to explore anything risky, challenging, or unpopular. Itâs all about avoiding backlash instead of telling an actually interesting story that makes sense.
I understand the hate must have been awful, but creating art brings with it the constant possibility of people misinterpreting, twisting and hating what you produce. That's just life. But you should create for you, not for them. Not for the safest, most positive reactions.
Scraping this storyline just because of a few loud, annoying voices lets public opinion steal your creative license, and that is a bigger loss than keeping it up could have ever been.
Very true. You've got to have a backbone with this sort of stuff unfortunately. Otherwise you aren't ever going to tell a story at all (or at least a good one)
Sooooooo I heard you have details about Blood and Frost?
Please put them in the soup bowl please it is for an oc: đĽŁ
Hey! Yeah, Blood and Frost. The best piece of lore/ storytelling hidden behind a paywall. Well, I won't say anything about that...
Honestly, I don't know what else I can say that Pay hasn't said already here can...can you tell us more lore about the Blood and Frost game plz......if you have any â @paythesmith on Tumblr (you asked this I just clocked lolll).
I think @themonotonysyndrome had some stuff (sorry to tag you if you don't haha). Enjoy the wild goose chase!
Lmfao do you guys remember a while ago when that one anon confession said 'mayo monkeys' to describe all the white milo hcs as a joke, and for like two weeks all of redacted tumblr was just:
'literally the policing around hcs is crazy. WERE NOT HURTING YOU IF WE THINK MILO IS WHITE. you guys force ur ideology on everyone its so unfair. leave my husband alone!!! this is why people are racist!'
'erm, friendly reminder from your favourite milo gremlin! racism is never okay, no matter what race! ALL slurs are bad and ALL races are valid <333'
'so hey if you want representation, maybe watch somebody who isnt white? you guys find a problem with everything just watch people like yourselves and let us have our silly little hcs?? this is so offensive and gross.'
*random VA getting involved to write a thinkpiece on the horrors of white racism and tell poc to leave the fandom and shut up lmao*
'the first result of google literally says a slur means a hurtful word so please check yourself bestie. ntm on the racism now!!'
'it's always you BLACK people. this was written by BLACK hands i'm sure of it. i hate BLACK people. op is BLACK. op MUST be BLACK because only a BLACK person would say this.'
I forgot the name of the VA but he said the redacted fandom had 'rabid' poc headcannons and that was enough to turn me off him forever. The whole response was unnecessary and micro aggressive as hell. White people are as fragile as glass sometimes.
I hope Blakeâs story gets to a point where itâs so obvious the moment Bestie is going to die, so he swoops in and replaces them with himself - fully believing that heâs saved them (at this point heâs off the rails, lost his marbles, gone off the deep end delirious and insane). Heâs dying but smiling nonetheless, because at least his love is alive.
And then boom! Bestie gets either fatally wounded or, as a replacement for Blake, gets possessed by DâDeridahn. Blake canât do anything about it because heâs already on the brink of death.
Bestie was supposed to die then, and every minute they survive after that point will only continue their suffering. And itâs all Blakeâs fault.
If Sam really wanted revenge against Alexis, the ultimate power move would be to fuck her dad. People hate when you do this, I speak from experience. Unfortunately Sam clearly hasn't got his head in the game in canon :(
If Sam really wanted revenge against Alexis, the ultimate power move would be to fuck her dad. People hate when you do this, I speak from experience. Unfortunately Sam clearly hasn't got his head in the game in canon :(
Not because it is both incredibly unsexy and clinical, but because it is some of the most hollow moral posturing one could possibly have. A performance of ethics. A sham. A travesty. Self-soothing bullshit. Samuel we have to fistfight immediately. Go out on the streets and drink from the vein like a man.
I remember vaguely that Sam primarily feeds on bloodbags (though if he doesn't then just apply this to the hypothetical vampire out there who surely does) and it pisses me off. I understand the initial disgust at feeding. I get that. Also...get over it? Human blood is not an endless renewable commodity. The supply worldwide is always frighteningly low.
But how do you know this, Pay? Well I happen to have AB- blood. I also happened to have one day suffered a severe injury out in the countryside, where I had to wait hours and hours for a transfusion. Why? No. Damn. Blood. THANKS SAMUEL. I hope the meal was good. Fuck you. I hope your sanctimonious delusion was worth my teenage life. Eat my ass. May your squeamishness destroy all you hold dear.
Medical blood donations and vampire blood donations are completely separate. they do not take blood away that wasn't specifically donated for them. And I would assume that they only let people with more common blood types donate to vampire blood banks, since blood types don't seem to matter to them.
It has been stated several times that only drinking bloodbags is not an option. Vincent explained to Lovely, that only newbloods get to drink from bags, until they get over their bloodlust. Afterwards, they'll have to drink from people. Bloodbags are just something they can consume in a pinch.
I don't think it was ever implied, that Sam doesn't drink from people. He has said once, that he doesn't really enjoy it and downs bloodbags as quickly as possible. But he never said that that was his primary blood source. He was very reluctant to bite Darlin' because drinking from someone in an intimate way is very different from taking blood from a random stranger. I think that conversation heavily implied that he does drink blood from people.
None of the vampires ever refused to drink from a person, because they thought it was kinda yucky. It was always due to deep trauma related to their turning.
Blood is constantly catastrophically low. You donât get moral points for building a second pipeline for your predator friends while people bleed out in hospitals. You know whatâs easier than setting up a vampire blood network? Not. Every drop you redirect, labelled for vamps or not, is one not going to a dying kid. Blood isnât renewable: itâs rare, it spoils, itâs costly to collect. The moment you start collecting it for vampires, youâve created scarcity.
And only common types donating isn't how blood logistics work. You canât tell a donor 'if youâre O+ youâre for the undead, but AB- goes to humans.' Thatâs screening, sorting, and running separate drives, a logistical nightmare. And if blood type doesnât matter to vamps, itâs worse. If it doesnât matter, no blood should be bagged. Feed live or die lmao.
And if canon says only newbloods get bags and everyone else feeds from people, then bloodbags are a temporary crutch so baby vamps can moralise for five minutes before society shoves them into the deep end. Makes the whole practice even hollower and harder for the fledgling to adapt. And if itâs not sustainable or accepted, why are we wasting resources and literal human blood on it? We barely have enough for humans as it is.
And the Sam thing? Makes my point. He still uses them. He consumes blood that could save a life. His reluctance to bite Darlinâ wasnât about logistics, it was intimacy. Personal hangup, not moral stance. Whether itâs âI donât like bagsâ or âI donât like drinking from loversâ, itâs preference, not principle. Every vampireâs feeding choices are about what makes them feel good, not whatâs ethically defensible. Thatâs exactly the performance I hate.
And idc if it's distaste or trauma. Thatâs a distinction without a difference. Whether itâs trauma, squeamishness, or moral posturing, the outcomeâs the same: a vampire avoiding direct feeding because it makes them uncomfortable, not because it saves lives. And to soothe themselves, they lean on bloodbags, filled from the same finite, overburdened supply as human transfusions (because regardless of the pipeline it still is coming from a person lol). Bloodbags maintained by a predatory, exploitative system built to cater to vampire preferences at the expense of everyone else. Verrry vampiric indeed. Seems Sam isn't so different to the rest of them, huh?
Capitalist nonsense, the lot of it. It makes sense if we only (and finally) accept that vampires are representations of that very same bloodthirsty system but ALAS alas :(. That is everyone's soft little moral compass and he can do no wrong
Donating blood to vampires is not a âpredatoryâ or âexploitativeâ. Anyone that donates to the Vampiric Blood Supply WANTS to help vampires feed. They are not held at gun point and forced to donate blood.
Thereâs also not capitalism involved considering itâs a donation system. Humans arenât paid to donate blood, they do it because they want to help members of their community. Vampires donât buy blood from these banks. In the solaire house the blood collected is given to William, and he disperses it to clan members who want to be able to feed from bags. Iâm sure there is a separate system set up to allocate blood bags for vampires unaffiliated with a vampiric house.
I once again ask, how is a human consenting to a vampire feeding on them any different from donating to a vampiric blood bank. They are both consensually giving blood so that vampires can feed. I really donât understand the issue here.
Why are people in this fandom constantly pressed about things that don't even exist? It's a fictional world, for all we know there is more than enough blood to go around. Why can't we just headcannon that instead of making the biggest fucking issue over something that doesn't affect us at all.
isnât overanalysing fictional details that donât actually matter part of the fandom fun? i think discussing details like this is harmless, and maybe youâre misinterpreting it as a huge issue because of the hyperbole in the original post LMAO
No guys this is the BIGGEST FUCKING ISSUE. I'm going to KILL MYSELF over fictional BLOODBAGS. It affects my real life MASSIVELY. We are all going to DIE.
I'm going insane and need answers now. Do we have an accurate power-scaling system for vampires? The system really confuses me and my brain has smelt a paradox.
So Vincent is stronger than Alexis, despite her being older than him, because William was younger when he turned her. So 'power' (which I'm assuming means just physical strength/ general prowess) is primarily determined by your maker's age.
But this doesn't really make sense to me, because if William is a power proxy, then that means that vampiric lineages progressively get weaker every generation, regardless of their age. (To visualise: if vampire A is 1000 and turns vampire B when A is 30, then turns vampire C 700 years later, would B or C be stronger, given C is still a fledgling and B is already an old blood of their own right?).
This system only works if old vampires have progeny extremely rarely, since this constant reproduction dilutes any 'old blood' power in the bloodline. It creates a degradation curve, since it's unlikely most makers will wait as long as William did to create them (he's also explicitly stated to be an outlier in this). Unless a vampire waits until they were older than their maker was when they made them to make their own progeny, net power is lost each generation.
Look at the vampires in canon, and how young they have their progeny. It leaves age as a bit of a non-factor, if everything is already biologically determined. How does age factor into power at all then? Why does it matter? It creates a paradox where either the system must be forced to decouple biological inheritance from static power or yield to account for time-dependent power scaling.
Also what does 'Old Blood' even mean, given both Quinn and William have been described as such? Is it your own age? Your maker's? Both? Is it a cultural term or a biological fact? Darlin' and Quinn seemed fairly matched for power, yet both Quinn and William share the same label that's meant to signify a noticeable power differential. It's made pretty clear neither Darlin' nor Quinn can beat William in a fight, at least conventionally, so it can't be used as a reliable indicator of strength.
If it's biological, William and Quinn should exist in the same tier of power, which they don't. If it's a reputation signifier, why is it used in contexts that power is discussed? If it's both, we need it more clearly defined to avoid this confusion, no?
I suppose I just don't like the idea that vampires are shuffled into this deterministic caste system where ascension is impossible unless you chance in an exalted bloodline at the right time. It undermines agency and ambition amongst the vampires, and makes the fact a near constantly-invoked ONE YEAR OLD VAMPIRE in William Solaire killing his maker absolutely impossible without some extremely convoluted means. Now I personally think this was done just so Alexis would be weaker than Vincent, but if somebody wants to clear this up for me, I would very much appreciate it lol.
such a paradoxical and confusing (and kinda fucked up) nature sort of ties into the whole 'vampires are A'Xerahn's folly' lore tidbit imo lmao
i mean, one could try to argue how it almost makes sense that they deteriorate and become increasingly unbalanced as time goes on - because they weren't meant to gain power / become stronger through lineage, they were just meant to exist as these experimental, subservient creatures to replace daemons for the sovereigns (which did not work, and thus they were given up on almost immediately and left to "ravage the land-born" and live out their screwed up lives among the rest of humanity).
I kinda like that concept, but it is admittedly just me looking at the wider historical implications of their origins and shoving that knowledge onto vamps as a blanket excuse as to why they don't really make sense in the long run.
maybe Erik didn't think that far ahead, maybe he did and the system is truly just that unfair, maybe this is a case of unreliable narrators (have the houses ever actually tested vampiric strength across the years, across generations, or are they working on assumptions themselves?) (who knows? only Erik, i suppose)
Yes! I was hoping for someone to bring up the Sovereigns. That is admittedly a nice touch thematically.
The current system is a cool idea in theory, but it also made me wonder how does Vincent even know he's stronger than Alexis? Is he faster? Stronger? Stealthier? More inclined to magic? It's such a loose term and I wish it was defined more. Have they tested it out, like you said? Or is it based on vibes? I think most of the magic system is based on vibes lol.
(this will be retroactively fixed Porter style I'm sure but I like your thoughts on it)
I'm going insane and need answers now. Do we have an accurate power-scaling system for vampires? The system really confuses me and my brain has smelt a paradox.
So Vincent is stronger than Alexis, despite her being older than him, because William was younger when he turned her. So 'power' (which I'm assuming means just physical strength/ general prowess) is primarily determined by your maker's age.
But this doesn't really make sense to me, because if William is a power proxy, then that means that vampiric lineages progressively get weaker every generation, regardless of their age. (To visualise: if vampire A is 1000 and turns vampire B when A is 30, then turns vampire C 700 years later, would B or C be stronger, given C is still a fledgling and B is already an old blood of their own right?).
This system only works if old vampires have progeny extremely rarely, since this constant reproduction dilutes any 'old blood' power in the bloodline. It creates a degradation curve, since it's unlikely most makers will wait as long as William did to create them (he's also explicitly stated to be an outlier in this). Unless a vampire waits until they were older than their maker was when they made them to make their own progeny, net power is lost each generation.
Look at the vampires in canon, and how young they have their progeny. It leaves age as a bit of a non-factor, if everything is already biologically determined. How does age factor into power at all then? Why does it matter? It creates a paradox where either the system must be forced to decouple biological inheritance from static power or yield to account for time-dependent power scaling.
Also what does 'Old Blood' even mean, given both Quinn and William have been described as such? Is it your own age? Your maker's? Both? Is it a cultural term or a biological fact? Darlin' and Quinn seemed fairly matched for power, yet both Quinn and William share the same label that's meant to signify a noticeable power differential. It's made pretty clear neither Darlin' nor Quinn can beat William in a fight, at least conventionally, so it can't be used as a reliable indicator of strength.
If it's biological, William and Quinn should exist in the same tier of power, which they don't. If it's a reputation signifier, why is it used in contexts that power is discussed? If it's both, we need it more clearly defined to avoid this confusion, no?
I suppose I just don't like the idea that vampires are shuffled into this deterministic caste system where ascension is impossible unless you chance in an exalted bloodline at the right time. It undermines agency and ambition amongst the vampires, and makes the fact a near constantly-invoked ONE YEAR OLD VAMPIRE in William Solaire killing his maker absolutely impossible without some extremely convoluted means. Now I personally think this was done just so Alexis would be weaker than Vincent, but if somebody wants to clear this up for me, I would very much appreciate it lol.