Specific draculosity

Relistening to the H.P. Lovecraft Literary Podcast's episode on Dracula and the use of the word "draculosity" made me think of the degree of draculosity various Vampire: the Masquerade Clans have.

Like:

• Tzimisce: 6/10 Draculas. Lords of the night living in crumbling castles in the Transylvanian wilderness and calling wolves on their enemies is pretty strong. On the other hand, there's the whole Necroscope-based body-sculpting powers that warp the entire concept around them. Dracula never turned Renfield into a ten-foot-tall killing machine with bone spikes for hands.


• Ventrue: 8/10 Draculas. Yes, they don't live in crumbling castles but the whole plot of Dracula was Dracula moving to the modern world! In some kind of theoretical Dracula 2000 that isn't Dracula 2000, Dracula would have a penthouse apartment paid for in Turkish gold. Plus Ventrue can enthrall others and dominate their minds--Renfields galore!


• Gangrel: 3/10 Draculas. Dracula is much more sophisticated and urbane than the Gangrel are, but the Gangrel are the only Clan I can imagine crawling down the wall of a castle in the middle of the night (a power which actually doesn't exist in V:tM, what's up with that?). Like the Tzimisce, they can also sic wolves on you.


• Brujah: 1/10 Draculas. Other than being vampires, the Lost Boys don't have a lot in common with Dracula, and neither do the ancient Greek debate guys that the Brujah were later turned into.


• Followers of Set: 0/10 Draculas. Technically these guys are vampires but they've never felt like it, since they clearly stepped out of the pages of The Coming of Conan the Cimmerian with only the most tangential connection to even V:tM's mythic history--"how did Set become a vampire?" is one of those questions that V:tM fans have been asking for decades and never had good answer for it. The answer for that is "it's taken from the secret vampire history in Anne Rice's Queen of the Damned with vampires ruling proto-Egypt, don't think about it too hard" but we're already talking about two books and neither of them are Dracula.


• Salubri: -1/10 Draculas. Three eyed demon-hunting healers? Come on.

Three year baby update!

"Three old!"
-Laila

Happy birthday Laila!

sashagee has very strong ideas about theming and decorating, and she wanted a mermaid/ocean theme since Laila loves fish so much. So when Laila went to bed on Saturday night, we spent a while decorating the room, putting up jellyfish-balloons and opalescent streamers and balloons and inflatable mermaid tails, and when Laila woke up, after breakfast sashagee put her in her very cute party dress:

A bioluminescent mermaid. As usual, I took multiple pictures and when she was looking at me she wasn't smiling and when she was smiling she wasn't looking at me.

( The cutest little girl in the world )

Her black eye is because she can right into an open drawer before sashagee could stop her. And true to form, she cried for a bit, then said "All better" and went over to go draw on her easel.