(no subject)

[kradeelav]

mypeachesandthyme:
Sweet baby Jesus you like Hellsing?? Yes good I like you even more :D

wizzard890:

I fucking love Hellsing. Granted, most of that is residual love that’s still rattling around inside me from about…oh, I don’t know, eighth grade or so? but yeah no, I used to be one of those slightly greasy Hot Topic babies camped out in the manga aisle at the bookstore, up to my elbows in the messy grotesque art of that goddamn series. I really felt like I was getting away with something, I used to hold the pages close to my chest when someone passed by. 

in hindsight, I think what I was getting away with was a straight shot of kink. right in the veins. I don’t think Hellsing meant to be quite (quite) as kinky and like–illicitly hot as it was? I always got the impression it was aiming For Boys, what with all the tits and gore and guns and revisionist supernatural WWII stuff. but uh. maybe the target ended up being a little wider than that. 

it’s hard to even describe it exactly, but I know I wasn’t the only teenage girl who ended up in sort of a knot over the series. like, here, this is just a sampling: there’s this deeply enforced master/servant relationship between a lady knight (who exists at this crossroads of female self-presentation that I think gave many young lesbians a big “ding” moment) and her vampire–dog, I think, is the best word. this terrifying arcane beast who rips her enemies apart with his teeth, and comes to heel at her command, and clearly clearly gets off on the dynamic. he crawls to her on his knees with the darkness of hell yawning open in his wake and she feeds him a drop of her blood and they never touch one another, and frankly it’s still a bit too much for me. there’s this lingering, fetish-y attention paid to the shape of guns, and to gloved hands. there’s binding rituals and monstrous transformation and a vampire fledgling who has this whirlwind of sexualized daddy issues that manifest in whether or not she can allow herself to drink blood like her sire encourages. everyone is in tight suits or billowing silk neckties or leather straightjackets, and double-jointed or their eyes are glowing or they’re licking things and look, I was a kid and this was all pretty overwhelming. 

and like. I don’t think this was the intention! but holy hell, this manga and anime slammed into a small female subset of my generation like a runaway train, and gave us all, you know. stuff to think about.

being thirteen is fucking weird.