re: mushroom picking: yes, you need a lot of knowledge and need to be very careful when picking mushrooms, in my family, 'mushroom knowledge' is sort of just inherited - i started going mushroom picking with my grandma when i was like 6 years old maybe (now i go with my mom who def knows more than me), and yeah the ones in the picture are p much the most poisonous ones - i think they are the prettiest mushrooms and for some reason they really make me happy when i see them lmao
That’s so cool! I can’t even touch mushrooms in the wild lmao I know nothing about which ones are safe, except that ‘colourful = probably not edible’. In Korea mushroom picking is illegal (!) unless it’s on your own land, and most people in Korea don’t own land in that sense, so I never learned 😔
I do love cooking mushrooms though. Good with oyster sauce :D
hi, this is gesa anon. i literally had to make an account bc i guess tumblr ate my ask (again >:c). anyway i’ve had an idea for a while and since i have 2 (two) braincells i find it hard to express it in words so i did it in pictures.
@novosonic also re: files pls feel free to send. I probably can’t offer much insight because I’m in no spoilers mode most of the time, but rest assured everyone who reads lib copes with memes, even me. The memetic potential of an aksug post correlates directly to how horrifying it is, generally
vampire au? i am interested (also, started reading lib storyline on aksug, went through 40 pages and decided to document my descent into madness in a 5-page long word doc, can drop u a link if you want to read it? its mostly memes and stupid jokes tho bc i had to cope somehow)
this vampire au really is about an artist who is not faster than a vampire
Okay well, this isn’t something I have a plot for or anything. I have no endgame here, just some aesthetic and the bare threads of a storyline??? that may one day become a thing, or may be reduced to a drabble, or will only ever live in my head. Basically, the dramatis personae:
Franck: artist, struggling in the late 19th century. Hired to come stay at this great mansion and make a sculpture of the owner, who Franck was told was about 80 years old and rapidly fading, but finds a Gesa perpetually stuck in his twenties instead. This is because Gesa is a vampire, which freaks them out greatly when they find out, hence their constant failed attempts to be faster than a vampire. Currently stuck in the mansion, having made about 20% progress on their sculpture. Gesa has tales to tell about his past. They’re entranced by those tales, and falling for him, while also repulsed at the same time. This is not a conscious act, and it’s a serious problem in-universe.
Gesa: lives in a grand mansion as a hermit. Irresistible to human beings. This is not within his control. Every ten years or so, he hires artists who enter his mansion and never come out. Hires Franck to make a sculpture of himself, like he’s done every decade since he became a vampire. This is not for vanity reasons. Was originally a damphir before he was fully turned, which potentially makes him invulnerable to/gave him strong resistance to most anti-vampire measures. Also why he is faster than human beings. Has many stories to tell. Is being hunted by vampire hunters, but passively. Franck reminds him of the man he loved once, but he’s not interested in pursuing things, given how relations with that man turned out. In the dark of the night he can still hear that man, and the rats, the rats in the walls.
Xavier: Was the artist hired before Franck, ten years ago. Was entranced by Gesa and has lived as a butler for him ever since. Is so completely head over heels he doesn’t even recognize his own lover working as a manservant, like. In the same house. For ten years.
Gaspard: Is Xavier’s lover, working as a manservant in the same house. Despite the fact Xavier hasn’t looked at him for ten years. He’d be more angry about this if he wasn’t also attracted to Gesa, entirely against his will, every time he passed by.
Brodi: Gesa’s old lover. Was an old vampire hunter, fell in love with Gesa, betrayed and attacked by his old colleagues. Gesa turned him to save his life. Became increasingly less human and sane over time, so had to be hidden away. So it’s literal, you know, the whole Gesa keeping him around in the walls thing. Franck hears him crawling around in the pipes sometimes.
Vampire hunters: Seb? Kav? I don’t know. They’re not very helpful
Plot may change at any time. I only have this AU because I’ve been thinking very hard about vampire fiction recently. There’s a common trope in v-fiction that vampires are inherently irresistible to humans, and that humans are attracted to them against their will - sometimes well after the vampire is purged, e.g. Laura in Carmilla - which I find very problematic. I don’t doubt that this trope is the reason why some people read vampire fiction, because fiction is where the lines between your measures of control blur, but it’s the way this attraction is treated within the text that fascinates me. Where’s the victim’s agency in this? More accurately, where does it go?
In vampire fiction where the goal is to get with the vampire, this attraction is considered a necessary aspect of the goal. It’s considered a good thing that the e.g. protagonist is attracted to the vampire, so the consent is never really examined in detail; at best, there’s some token resistance, then the attracted person gives in. But the issue still exists in vampire fiction where the goal is to purge the vampire, because the attraction tends to be treated as a symptom: it’s a sign that a vampire is nearby and must be killed, and the victim is almost never the one who can perform the killing. The victim only suffers and has their perceptions altered. They may recover, but I’ve seldom seen a work of fiction that permits the victim to truly reflect on what they felt, perhaps even confess to a lingering attraction honestly.
Not all v-fiction is like this, of course. But it’s a common enough trope that it makes me wonder. What if you have a whole houseful of people attracted to a vampire like this, with no trajectory or a grand plan from the vampire, and there’s no Van Helsing to solve the problem? What if the victims have varying degrees of awareness on what’s happening, what if at least one of them understand the mechanisms of a vampire well enough to know this isn’t real - and decide they like him, anyway? What if the vampire is disinterested in these people, but the very existence of these people prove an existential nuisance? Is that consensual? Do we just live and let live? Is there even a story in there, how can we maintain this dynamic without simply falling into a ‘harem’ cliche?
I don’t know. I don’t actually even know if this is as big a problem as I’m making it out to be, because I’m not an expert on v-fiction at all. It’s just a clattering thought, is all. I hope it was slightly interesting aha
