I Just Want To Put It Out There: Even Though I'm A Die-hard Shadowfaerie Fan (the 40+ Pages Fanfiction

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Honestly be pretentious as fuck about the stuff you create. Do a press release for your fanfic updates. Do a Q&A about your webcomic. Make fake merch designs for your OCs. Commission "official" book covers. Very few of us will ever get to a stage where something we've created Makes It Big but even if you have an audience of 5 people plus a shoelace fucking indulge yourself and pretend!! It's the only way to live!!

Snake Fruit Cookie backstory headcanon

My friends and I once made a theory that Snake Fruit Cookie was the child of Affogato, who he «conjured» with the help of magic and a piece broken off from Dark Cacao. I know this sounds crazy, but listen.

Snake Fruit always dreamed of becoming a dragon, like those they were forced to bow before their entire life. Actually, this is probably why they went to serve Longan in the first place. But when they eventually managed to turn into a dragon, their appearance looked differently: Ananas, Lotus and Pitaya (I couldn't find Lychee, but I think they looked the same) were built, more or less, as we are used to seeing them in Western folklore – like lizards.

Snake Fruit, on the other hand, seemed to look more like a snake, they didn't have the wings or even the body of a dinosaur, and, nevertheless, they were signed as «Snake Fruit Dragon».

What does it mean?

Well, if you look closely, you'll see that they are depicted as a stereotypical Oreo dragon from the Dark Cacao Kingdom. I don’t think that if it had depended on them, they wouldn't have taken on the appearance that they saw in the faces of their masters – which means that they acquired such an appearance due to circumstances beyond their control. I'm making the simplest bet possible: they already were like this, it was in their nature to become a dragon that looked like this.

Because Snake Fruit themselves are not from this region. They are from a place where serpentine dragons are reflected in culture (tapestry and statues) and folklore (the tale of dragons that king Dark Cacao cut down, creating a cycle of day and night).

Now what does their supposed kinship has to do with it? Well, eh, I just wanted to somehow connect these two restless souls with too similar destinies, but different ages (I always presumed Affogato is old for some reason): both Affogato and Snake Fruit managed to achieve their goals, but failed to keep them. I can’t say anything about their external resemblance to any of them – based on their appearance, I can rather assume that this is Affogato who's the second parent of Dark Choco, but that’s not the point.

Based on some joking Twitter posts, we've concluded that most likely Choco's mother is White Lily, who created him based on her designs and research (with some help from Dark Cacao, of course), but what happened to her notes when she left to Beast Yeast? They didn't just disappear, did they? So, I came to the conclusion that no, they didn't – which Affogato could have taken advantage of.

Affogato couldn't have been unaware of the circumstances under which Prince Dark Choco was exiled: it might have occurred to him at some point to curry favor with the king by using Lily's notes to create a new heir (possibly even secretly taking a piece from him, resulting in unequal parts). No relations are implied here though: in Cookie Run, one of the semi-«official» methods of reproduction involves breaking off two pieces of dough from the parents to, when combined, create a new cookie.

He didn't take into account, though, that his half ended up disproportionately larger than Cacao's: baby Snake Fruit turned out to be almost a copy of Affogato, and he began to fear that the king simply wouldn't believe him. Add to that Cacao's deteriorating condition due to Affogato's control magic, and we have a deadlock situation: the resulting child needed to be protected.

Affogato could have known that the dragon gene might reveal in Snake Fruit one day. Considering that he himself was a mixture of Coffee Tribe and Milk Tribe residents, and the resulting child clearly reflected his Milk ancestors, it was safe to assume that Dark Cacao's ancestors would eventually manifest themselves too. Keeping this in mind, the idea came to him to send the child far away to Longan, the Dragon Master, to keep them away from harm. They would raise them, nurture them in their home, and perhaps something worthwhile would come out of them, while Affogato figured out how to explain their existence to the king.

Well, along with the genes of Affogato's ancestors, Snake Fruit inherited his nasty character and penchant for intrigue – unwittingly following in the footsteps of one of their parents, becoming an advisor and being cast down for it into the abyss. Hopefully, their body will wash up on the shores of the continent, where their newfound majesties can be picked up by kind people: someone must ultimately look after the king while Caramel Arrow is busy defending the kingdom, and Dark Choco hasn't come to his senses yet.

Literally the only thing that doesn't fit into this theory is Longan themselves: firstly, their dragon appearance somewhat resembles Snake Fruit's dragon form. There's no reason to assume that Longan has any connection to the Dark Cacao Kingdom (unless Snake Fruit hadn't seen their dragon form before). And secondly, Longan... well, they're chauvinist – they wouldn't accept a regular cookie into their service, even if kings were to ask them to. In that case, Affogato would have to persuade the dragons that the child is a hundred percent dragon, just not awakened yet (and by the time it became clear that it's more cookie than dragon, they would have gotten used to their service and simply mockingly called them «Snake»).

Thank you for coming to my Ted Talk again.

The life of being non-native English speaker and learning English on your own is so funny, because your brain views this language in a completely different way, and it feels like a constructor that allows you to express your thoughts more directly than you could in your native one.

I am devastated by myself and I am devastated by the world and I want to sink back into my comfortable depression. I’m going to stop taking my mood stabilizers and my antipsychotics to numb myself to the pain of experiencing life

It honestly always baffled me why VTMB just INSISTS the player to be an edgelord, sometimes to the point of cringe (even with taking in account having a Beast inside you), but even when you're playing a high-humanity vampire you're almost forced to be unnecessary rude to people like Gary or Imalia right away, even if you don't want to, and then I realized something.

We're playing as a young person in their twenties in 2004. It's a millennial.

Vampire the Masquerade: Twilight

I'm going to do one sinful thing and do a VTM/Twilight crossover, but after Cookie Run and Winx Club, I don't find it that surprising anymore. Sorry for my bad English in advance.

In fact, I'm surprised that only few people have noticed the similarities between the two at all – and as someone who has obsessed over Twilight since childhood and developed an obsession with VTM a year ago, I can say that there are literally entire tropes in Twilight that leave the impression that Stephenie Meyer directly copied them from Revised rulebook.

Or, perhaps, she just didn’t like looking for the sarcophagus, which is... valid (Twilight came out in October 5, 2005 and VTMB in November 16, 2004).

But all jokes aside, I think adapting Twilight into a TTRPG would be really interesting because I would die to read a fanfic with that crossover (or maybe I'll just have to write it myself 🥲). But before I start assigning characters to clans, I need to address a few things:

⏳ The setting of Twilight is those same weird times of Thin Blood that the Camarilla Elders were so afraid of (and, as it turns out, for a good reason 💀), where Kindred aren't afraid of the sun or at least aren't as affected by it, and the power over the world of vampires was seized by the Italian mafia. It would be funny to simply assign the Volturi to the Giovanni clan, but all the characters from there would fit perfectly into other clans, so let’s take it that in this universe the concepts of «clan» and «sect» have merged together.

👑 Speaking of which: the Volturi are clearly the local equivalent of the Camarilla. I joked above that Meyer’s inspirational guide to her world of vampires was the Revised rulebook, but I am quite seriously convinced that at least she must have heard the word «Masquerade» somewhere – otherwise, I don’t see where else this similarity came from. An elitist, corrupt ruling community of old vampire farts who are (literally) petrified with time, where not everyone can get, and who make a living by imposing immutable laws (Traditions) and enforcing strict punishments for non-compliance. Or maybe I'm just delusional...

🏴 All the other «clans» (in Twilight that's a group of vampires who, for whatever reasons, decide to stick together and have a more or less publicly open life, but a more appropriate term would be coterie), such as the Cullens or Denali, are, firstly, doomed to nomadism, since they cannot afford permanent protection as in Volterra, and, secondly, they are local Anarchs. But not the kind of Anarch Kindred of Downtown LA (Nines would be disappointed in them), but rather as an Oligarchy of Anarch Barons, like in Hollywood. They don't have the balls to openly tell the Volturilla and their laws to hell, but they preserve the Masquerade strictly, even to the point of organized combat campaigns, as it was in the end of Eclipse.

🩸 Now, packs like James's clan are obvious remnants of the Sabbat. Unlike the local Anarchs, they wander constantly without settling anywhere, even for a short time, and don't even care about the Masquerade, taking people away from them only in cases of extreme necessity. They are absolutely not concerned about the secrecy of their crimes, their level of humanity is much below average, which they, however, don't worry about, since they completely devote themselves to the Beast.

Also! There's a thing about the soul. In Twilight, the general consensus among vampires is that they don't have one. All those who somehow spoke out on this matter (Aro, Edward, Carlisle) claimed that they were soulless monsters, doomed to Hell, driven only by bloodthirsty instincts. I've heard something similar before... only in VTM it is called the Beast.

So, let's begin.

I. We'll start with the most obvious example, that not only fits perfectly with the description of one entire clan in VTM, but also helps define other characters within the Cullen family. Edward is an obvious Toreador.

And when I say obvious, I mean not only his personality (the archetype of the self-righteous tragic hero-lover with a penchant for art and beautiful suffering, is, in general, the whole essence of the Toreador clan), but also the Disciplines that he showed in books and films, as well as his motives for behaving and acting as he did.

For starters, the fact that Edward is just about the fastest vampire we know of in Twilight is the most direct demonstration of Celerity. His token ability – mind reading – is nothing more than an Auspex (I can't guess the dots with certainty, but he clearly has about 4-5), and in the first film, in the scene where Bella was being harassed by a group of thugs (but to be fair, in the book he just beat them), he actually used what is very clearly depicted as Presence: spreading his aura of menace over a group of people, making them afraid.

He just fits perfectly with the Toreador in terms of abilities, and his personality only confirms this. As I said, Edward is a typical representative of the clan (and I’m not very happy about it since I myself play for the Toreadors and this is my fave clan... 😬), simply because... well, I assume everybody remembers how he behaved? This craving for suffering, idiotic sacrifices in the name of love, manipulation of the feelings of people who depend on him (and resisting the charm of a vampire, especially a Toreador, is a task where any human NPC almost automatically has a losing roll), and, consciously or not, creating conditions for even more drama and complication of everything around. This man is a nightmare to live with, honestly – especially when you realize that he usually manages to get everything his way because of his supernatural charisma, while we, the readers, are well aware that he actually thinks like every other teenage incel you may encounter at your school. He concentrates very heavily on the feelings and specifically love, while at the same time remaining incredibly vain: at first Bella attracted him only because he wanted to rip her throat with his teeth couldn't get through her thoughts, so this allowed him to imagine that she was all so mysterious and «not like other girls» (as he was sincerely repelled by the horny thoughts of his classmates; little did he know that Bella was no different from them). Let's not forget the concerns for his own virtue and mourning for his lost soul and humanity – very strong words for someone who had no problem putting Bella and the people around her in danger many times and then pretending he didn't see it coming (to be fair for the sake of it, if his actions fully correlate with a 17-year-old boy, then his mental development must be as well; he's selfish as one, too). And last but not least – his pretentiousness, which sometimes made me feel cringe: his every compliment to Bella, the language that he uses (no, he's not that old of a vampire and he's very much aware of young people slang) and notorious teary pauses in sentences. If Robert Pattinson was given the task of playing a textbook Toreador, then he did it 100%

II. In VTM the clan is passed down from Sire to Childe: if a Sire belongs to a clan, then his Childer will automatically inherit it. The opposite is also true – if the Childe's clan is reliably known, then so is the Sire's. What I mean is that Carlisle is also a Toreador, and one that fits those same stereotypes too.

We don't know anything about the level of his Disciplines – I'll just assume that he wasn't as focused on developing them as Edward – and he doesn't have a special gift. He has what was described in the books as «supernatural compassion» that allowed him to more easily tolerate a diet of animal blood, but this doesn't really indicate anything other than that he just has a large Willpower pool. We do, however, know why Carlisle sticks to his principles, teaches them to other vampires, and his personality as such.

For starters: his aura of holiness is nothing more than dust in the eyes from Stephenie Meyer; for example, he had no moral concerns about his constant presence in Forks attracting vampires to the area, causing the local Tribe to suffer a rapidly growing numbers of shape-shifters. He has done many things – from financial fraud to intervention in the lives of entire communities, human and otherwise – that are questionable at best, but what does he feel the most remorse for? Ah yes – for the fact that once three hundred years ago he used to feed on human blood. Why? Because it makes him feel bad about himself and ruins his holier-than-thou image. Remember all these talks about «going to hell» and «being damned»? It was Carlisle who put this idea into Edward's mind. Nevertheless, the entire family considers their patriarch to be the epitome of humility and a role model... for just being self-aware. Do you really think he doesn't know about it? Even Bella told him this directly in New Moon.

I'm not trying to say here that Carlisle is a terrible person. I'm trying to say that he clearly can tell right from wrong, while also really believing that he and his family – in which no one really cares as much about morality or values human life as he thinks he does – are really good guys, by turning a blind eye on everything inconvenient. Very Toreador to me.

Also he's fascinated by the classic art even more than Edward, but this may be just the influence of Volturi, idk.

III. Esme is another Carlisle's Childe, and therefore is also automatically a Toreador.

Like Carlisle, she doesn't actually have any special powers – but she does have what was described in the books as «extreme passion» and «ability to warmly and passionately love the people around her» (you get this). The interesting thing is that she and Carlisle were the original Bella and Edward: Carlisle turned the dying Esme into a vampire for the sake of eternal love. I swear, with the way Sires were banned from having relationships with their Childer in V5, the Toreador clan will just leave the Camarilla in a minute.

IV. Let's take a short break from the Toreadors and identify everyone's favorite manic pixie dream girl – Alice.

She is an obvious Malkavian with her gift of seeing the future and general eccentricity, there is no question about it. Interestingly enough, her Sire was an unknown vampire psychiatrist from the mental hospital where Alice was placed by her parents, and who turned her after she had a vision of encountering James (Mr Grout?..)

V. Now back to hell – Rosalie, another's Carlisle's Childe, is also a Toreador (I mean, come on, even her name is a hint to «the Clan of the Rose»).

There is an interesting detail in her story (which is perhaps one of the most tragic in the family) that none of the Cullens can boast of. She had never tasted human blood, never. Even Bella tried it, although when she was still human; Rosalie never drank it, even when she killed her rapists. She does this with back-breaking work, and perhaps her level of humanity is one of the highest in the family, but what is interesting here is how her Toreadorism manifests itself in her particular case.

She doesn't drink human blood not because she values human life, but because it's her way of showing her superior humanity in the family – over Carlisle and over Edward, the ones who claim to care the most. Rosalie, on the contrary, doesn’t care about people at all – she multiple times stated it, and even directly told Bella about this in Eclipse. Well, at least she's honest about it.

Rosalie, like all the other Cullens, only pretends that human lives are important to her, and even then, she does it reluctantly – which is why Edward doesn't think highly of her. Maybe it only seemed to me, but I noticed that Edward has some kind of envy towards her on the basis of «humanity points», because she has an advantage over him and she knows about it; however, I can’t even say with certainty whether Edward likes anyone in his family at all, except Carlisle.

Rosalie, following the good tradition of the Toreador clan, puts love at the forefront, and her main unfulfilled dream is a real family, including children, grandchildren and aging. Vampire life, however, dictates other conditions: it's easier to survive in clans, especially in those where there are gifted vampires (even if they're not her closest friends). It was for this reason that she agreed to take care of Bella when she became pregnant – not because Rosalie suddenly warmed up to her, but because it would give her the opportunity to nurse the baby she herself had longed for.

Again, the things Rosalie does to stay morally pure – refusing to drink human blood and relying on her moral superiority over this – don't make her truly merciful and compassionate, as Carlisle might want her to be: even if Rosalie didn't Embrace Emmett herself, she was selfish enough to carry him miles to Carlisle and beg to turn him so she could have forever love with him. Putting her wishes first, even knowing the hellish pain that transformation brings, and so deciding to pass the responsibility onto someone else... yes, that is a true Kindred.

VI. We're done with simple examples, and now let's move on to those where I hesitated about a clear answer. Emmett Cullen, being the Childe of Carlisle, should also naturally be a Toreador, but he obviously doesn't feel like one, unlike everyone else (with the exception of Alice).

I understand that, at least externally, the Brujah clan would suit him better than anyone else, but the fact that Toreadors cannot be strong warriors is nothing more than a stereotype. No, of course, the most often played out Toreador archetype is a dude who's hobbies consist of hanging late Baroque paintings in the house with records of Italian operetta in the background, but this is not all that art is limited to. Someone once said that a Toreador martial artist is more to be feared than a Gangrel or even a Banu Haqim. Emmett, as he was shown in books and films, always votes for a fight; this could have passed for Brujah clan compulsion if not for his competitive streak. I understand, it’s very far-fetched, but I think it fits. Also the closest example of the power that a Toreador admiring the art of fighting can possess would be Sheriff Qadir al-Asmai from CoNY and SoNY.

VII. An even more confusing example is Jasper Hale. Initially, I thought of adding him to the Toreadors, like all the rest, since the Internet agreed with me: he was Embraced because of his appearance and he possess special talent that clearly resembles Presence, but my personal guess would be Brujah. Yeah, him – not Emmett.

As a soldier, he was chosen by his Sire, Maria, specifically as a fighting unit that would train newborns like himself, and then kill them when they were no longer needed. His whole life was consisting of fightings – and not to say for a just cause (during his lifetime he was a Confederate💀)

But okay, a vampire’s backstory can be anything and it doesn’t depend or correlate with the clan, so what made me think that he is a Brujah? Firstly, they also have Presence. Secondly: his strength and skill in battle can, debatable, but be justified by Potence. And thirdly: the way he behaves. The way I see it, Jasper can't help but constantly fail his Franzy checks, because... this is just a Brujah clan curse.

Over time, of course, he gains more and more Willpower and adapts to an animal diet, but he finally calms down, it seems, only when Bella herself becomes a vampire: that is, the source of provocation (her exceptionally fragrant blood + debilitating vegetarian diet) stops looming before his nose.

VIII. So, the last member of the clan. Bella's case touches on a lot of themes, such as generation and the level of humanity of the Cullens, and when vacillating between a regular Toreador like Edward and a Thinblood, I chose Thinblood because Ratatouille's birth helped me with that.

First of all: Rodimus for sure is a Dhampir (but Stephenie Meyer avoided the word for some reason, preferring «hybrid» instead 🤨). The existence of these half-bloods in VTM is an existing fact as well as in the Twilight canon. They appear when one of the parents is specifically a Thinblood and the other is human, and have some unique traits that Kindred have (a blood pool or the ability to learn some Disciplines), but aren't immortal and can't Embrace or create ghouls.

With all that said, if Edward could impregnate Bella, why didn't I assign him to Thinbloods, but to a regular Toreador? Because, let's be clear once again: the world of Twilight as a whole is the Time of Thin Blood, because it's the only possibility for Kindred to adapt to being under the sun and at the same time retain vampiric traits, such as immortality and some superpowers. This can explain why not everyone here masters the Disciplines, but only specific lucky individuals who retain the ability to develop them – it may be, or may be not, due to the phenomenon of Blood thickening, that lowers one's generation (and doesn't happen to everyone).

Would it be interesting if I simply wrote down absolutely all the vampires from Twilight as Thinbloods? No – for exactly this reason, I'm going to make a second part about the Volturi, where I'll sort them into clans, instead of just slapping the Giovanni label on them all.

So how did it happen then that Edward is not a Thinblood, but Bella is? Well, perhaps his blood is still in the process of thickening, which will lower his generation eventually: Carlisle, as I understand it, is a 13th generation Kindred, which makes all of his Childer 14th. In previous editions of VTM, the 14th generation was considered Thin-Blooded, who still had the ability to Embrace, but 15th didn't. Interesting that in the Dark Ages the 13th generation was also considered Thin-Blooded, and they also couldn't reproduce and create blood bonds, however, over time, their blood thickened and now they're considered absolutely normal Kindred that can do all those things. The same thing happened around 2010-s in the VTM timeline: now the 14th generation are full-fledged Kindred. The problem with the 15th generation is that there's more of them appearing than the blood has time to thicken.

For this reason, I see Edward as a vampire who, during Twilight, was in a period of life where his generation was gradually lowering, which allowed him to have a child with Bella in the moment, but is unlikely to allow him with any other human woman in another 100 years or so.

There is no definite answer as to why the blood thickens or weakens in the first place, other than the ghostly vague narrative tool that is Gehenna. I can only assume that, just as the increasing number of bloodsuckers in the werewolf territory triggers a gene in some of them, forcing more and more of them to shape-shift, some other processes help the Twilight vampires become stronger every day (Bella's gift, which I sincerely can't tie to any Discipline, except for some transcendental level of Presence, could develop so quickly precisely because her blood thickens very quickly and her generation from 15th is already shifting to 14th).

She was Embraced, however, as a Thinblood – just like Edward, with the only difference that he was Embraced at a time when the 14th generation was still considered Thinbloods.

(I use the word «blood» here because it's still a crossover with VTM, and also because the «venom is the only substance in a vampire’s stone body» thing still annoys me)

The only exceptions to this are Jasper and Alice, since they were not embraced by Carlisle: we don't know their generations.

Just like we don't know the level of humanity of each of the Cullens: I would argue that Bella currently has the highest if measured from an objective point of view (just because she's the youngest), but in V5 we no longer have a concept of «humanity» as something definitive. Now it's rather the Kindred’s assessment of their actions with their internal moral code – which is why Edward, with all his feigned self-flagellation about his murders in the past, actually remains a vampire with a fairly high humanity and passes perfectly as a regular normal human, albeit pale.

Same thing with the rest of the Cullens.

***

With all that being said, I believe that the crossover with VTM is a kind of filter – an opportunity to expose all of Twilight's flaws and use them as something interesting, an addition to the universe, make them something that can be used as part of a story about monsters, rather than something to shy away from and choose to turn a blind eye to.

Be you a monster who has renounced everything human and decided to give yourself to the Beast wholeheartedly, like James's clan, or a Kindred who has hopped on the path of enlightenment, deciding to reject all worldliness and find a greater meaning in your existence, beyond the simple blood-sucking curse and everything around you, like Volturi, or decide to delude yourself so much that at some point you really believe that you're still pretty much like humans and even try to adhere to all the virtues that are only available to you in conditions of constant moral compromises, like Cullens – none of you really are good guys. There's no such thing in VTM, and that's why I love it so much.

But of course, Stephenie Meyer just couldn't acknowledge the fact that her precious sparkly creations aren't actually good people – otherwise that would made Twilight something more than a teenage romance, god forbid.

Thanks for coming to my Ted Talk.

will you save me a dance?

sportacus vs homelander

Ain't no way Afton's personal hell is Jennifer's Body 💀💅