I think I could have dazzled in the 20′s and 30′s! I would have thrown lavish parties that lasted for weeks, mingled with writers and artists of the era, delighted in the spread of Jazz, and made another fortune running gin, whiskey, rum, moonshine and vodka up and down the coast. I would have rubbed elbows with Capone, Maranzano, Luciano….perhaps they would have even given me some sort of nickname hmm?
As for the 60′s and 70′s, it was quite the tumultuous time….I don’t really care for much of the fashion but I would have found a great deal of enjoyment in the art and music. I would have also been a regular at Studio 54 and then CBGB’s (in the eighties, I did visit CBGB’s often when in NYC). I would have thrown myself into music and probably would have started recording much earlier than the eighties. The drug culture was interesting as well and it might have been fun to experiment a bit more….I would have loved meeting Jim Morrison, Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, David Bowie (Ziggy Stardust phase).
However, the aesthetic of these eras have lasted throughout our brief history, thanks to the leaps and bounds made in preservation, and aside from the dead, we can revisit each as often as we like.
Confirmed. It’ll likely stay in storage too because none of us are flamboyant enough to pull off trying to wear it.
Who Wore It Best? The Vampire Lestat or this Disturbing Lady Mannequin?
Poll Results:
The Vampire Lestat: 60%
Disturbing Lady Mannequin: 2%
“Why Are You Showing Me This Picture?”: 38%
You and I both are well aware that is not my cloak. No one dyed the wolf fur red. Don’t show me classics from Liberace’s closet (who, by the way–was he actually mortal and is he actually still alive?).
But I assume the statement is true. Has it dry-rotted by now, or has it been preserved?
Everything is preserved. Our Archives are fitted similarly to many museums, with temperature controls and limited exposure to handling for items that time has rendered fragile. Fabric is infamously weak to mishandling. Your cloak, however, has managed to endure well within its containment.
With the advancement of technologies, we have updated our facilities to a superior level of Preservation Storage. So your cloak might very well exist for another century or two.
I’ve always had a fondness for snow….except when encased in the fragile skin of a mortal. The cold and wet has always made me miserable. I remember struggling through it as a mortal when the wolves were bearing down on me. I remember how insidiously it would creep in around the windows at the castle or into the corridors, where it would settle in drifts and make us all huddle closer to our hearths. I remember those same drifts, filling up the kitchen in Jamestown. Laying in them as my lungs stung with each coughing fit. Thinking that I was going to die there.
But I also remember how sunlight looked on snow….how every crystal refracted the light and set the ground on fire! And how blue the hills looked on full moon nights. How every surface was carved in ice and glittering immediately after a storm…..the way the Earth slept beneath her downy blanket, a beauty waiting for Apollo’s kiss.
Winter is always there. When you are high enough in the atmosphere, that is where water turns to ice crystals and the air is thin. It simply waits for when it can return to embrace the ground again.
It was summer. One of the more sweltering that I remember. We were at least a month into being truly lovers, not just friends, and he’d dragged me out into the hills in search of a stream. We each had a bottle of wine (or two?) and he was carrying bread, cheese, and cherries; I had my violin.
It took almost an hour to find it. Mon dieu, but it was so hot. The sort of hot that is like a curtain before you, like a wet blanket that covers your body. By the time we found the stream, we’d both stripped off our shirts, and I remember worrying my feet would have swollen in my boots.
We stripped off our clothing and immediately took to the water. Now, remember, these are cool mountain streams, even in summer. It was glorious. Bathing, drinking, splashing each other, wrestling. Then making love on the grass, our breath coming hard, our cries building until the little death, and then collapsing beside each other in happy, satisfied exhaustion.
We drank wine for hours and ate, the cherry juice staining our fingers and mouths, our lazy kisses a mixture of sweat and fruit. I remember almost weeping at the perfection of it, turning into his neck and burying my face there because I knew it wouldn’t last, that the sunlight and sweetness and poetry of it would end, as it always did.
Before we left, I remember he grabbed me ‘round the waist and kissed me, then pulled back and looked me in the eye. If you don’t know him, you can’t know how penetrating, how soul-piercing that gaze can be–he loves with perfect trust, and it’s absolutely terrifying.
“I love you. I will always love you.”
The real horror is that I believed him. Utterly.
OH MY DEAR LORD WHY WOULD U DO THIS!!! #RIGHT IN THE FEELS
All I can do is sit here with my mouth open, going “Oh!”
Beautiful, indissectable (not a real word, but in this context, I mean that I am unable to dissect this down to its parts).
BONUS POINTS for never mentioning a name, and not needing to!
This is the kind of memory that would best explain where their pain as a ship truly comes from. Even more sad is that Lestat was so naive to say such a thing, but it sounds perfectly in character. Maybe by saying it, he thought it could be made truth ;A;
That soul-piercing gaze – yes… that’s the Lestat I fell in love with in canon, the one Nicolas fell for, the searing real Lestat stripped of his masks that anyone who falls for the real Lestat falls for, too ❤
☤:the last time my muse went to the hospital and why
First of all, I would never drink blood from a blood bag. It is not fresh. That, my friends, no matter how the hospitals may spin it for you mortals, is dead blood. And I’m not drinking dead blood. Not on your goddamn life. I’ve done it once or twice in my immortality–and that was one or two times far too many.
You need to understand that dead blood… It’s like if someone gave you rotten vegetables, I suppose, or meat that has almost turned. Sure, you can find a way to eat it, and sure, you probably won’t die–you may get a stomach ache, or feel nauseous–and sure, it will keep you alive. But it isn’t going to be a pleasant experience.
But the last time I was at the hospital?
Last Tuesday, actually. The young woman who lives down the block from us collapsed on her bike outside at approx. 3am–since we were sitting on the balcony, we heard and saw it happen. Taking her there myself was far faster than calling the paramedics, so that was what I did.
If you feel the urge to call me ‘hero,’ I won’t object.
While I appreciate your historical attention to detail, I’m afraid this doesn’t really apply to me, my dear.
What a strange question to ask our dear Lestat. My great city existed well before even his ancestors were conceived, and thus I doubt he would be a very knowledgeable fount on this subject.
The people of Rome knew that lead must be dangerous, as we were not blind to the ailments that seemed to follow those who worked in casting lead. They breathed in the caustic fumes and were left pallid and sickly, and from this we gathered that lead must be rather unwholesome.
Although lead was widely accepted as a dangerous metal, many still believed it to be necessary in some aspects. It was used to line aqueducts and fashioned into pipes–nevermind that clay pipes were entirely more sought after, even by those such as myself who were rich enough to afford otherwise. Medicines and cosmetics as well were made of great quantities of lead, despite the wide belief that it should not be ingested directly if at all possible. Some greats such as Pliny and Columella argued that in leaden vessels was the only way to prepare Defrutum, a sweet syrup used to make products such as wine more desirable.
Many attest that a rise in lead poisoning stemming from the Roman’s love for wine was perhaps a cause of the empire’s decline, though there is little evidence to support this. It is true that lead poisoning would have greatly impacted the sperm count of adult males, or the ability to carry a child in females, and even would have been fatal to the children themselves–as wine was the predominant drink for all citizens, regardless of age–but this means very little when you realize the people of Rome had no interest in rearing children, or even marriage. In fact, it came to a point where the people were so focused on a childless state, that Agustus himself attempted to intervene, much to no avail.
As for the sexual arousal, I can only speak from personal experience. My sex drive was what I assume to be average for a man my age. I sought a wife early on, I sought to make love, and I sought to be loved. I never happened upon any urges that were out of the ordinary, or struggled with a drive for physical contact more mighty than I could handle–though, some of those who read Armand’s poor account of Venice may greatly disagree. Of course, by then my need for mortal sexual intercourse had long been dead, and I base my words solely on the desire for something greater: the sharing of immortal blood.
Ah, my friend, what an alluring question! And not an easy one, I must admit.
Forget the material possessions, such a fleeting matters are not worth mentioning. Let’s ponder of the qualities of “the best gif” for a bit, shall we?
It would have to be something priceless, something not easily given, something one would treasure, something one truly needs.
It is not easy to pick one gift and not offend those whose gifts will be omitted. But what I believe was the greatest gift I ever received was Bianca’s sacrifice. Her willful devotion to me, in my darkest hour, her selfless love and care. That, my friend, shall be the gift I name as the best.
“Evil is always possible.” “The world chances, we do not, therein lies the irony that kills us.” “Evil is a point of view.” “God kills, and so shall we.” “The only power that exists is inside ourselves.” “Goodness is eternally difficult.” “And sometimes i found myself so vividly aware of him it was as if he had only just left the room and the ring of his voice were still there.” “Whether a man would die tomorrow or the day after or eventually… it doesn’t matter.” “I knew I was home.” “I walked the streets.” “Do you know what it means to be loved by Death?” “Do you know what it means to have Death know your name?” “Don’t you see?” “I’m at odds with everything and always have been!” “I have never belonged anywhere with anyone at any time!” “I love you still, that’s the torment of it.” “The measure of my hatred is that love.” “Do you know now how much I hate you?” “Don’t be a fool for the Devil, darling.” “You see that old woman?” “You will never grow old, and you will never die.” “I shall never ever grow up.” “Let the flesh instruct the mind.” “A starving child is a frightful sight.” “I want you. I want you more than anything in the world.” “Mortal beauty often makes me ache.” “That is the crowning evil, that we can even go so far as to love each other, you and I.” “Who else, knowing us as we know each other, could do anything but destroy us?” “I look like an angel, but I’m not.” “We’re beautiful like the diamond-backed snake, or the striped tiger, yet we’re merciless killers.” “You know nothing.” “And we must live with the knowledge that there is no knowledge.” “But I can’t hate you, my love.” “Now it’s time to leave him.” “What does it mean to die when you can live until the end of the world?” “I wanted love and goodness.” “It was my death.” “I saw my last sunrise.” “And then I said farewell to sunlight, and set out to become what I became.” “You haven’t tears enough for what you’ve done to me.” “I might have known what it was to walk at your side.” “Aren’t there gradations of evil?” “Is evil a great perilous gulf into which one falls with the first sin, plummeting to the depth?” “I never changed after that.” “I was satisfied. I was filled to the brim. But I was dead. And I was changeless.” “You are the night, and the night alone understands you and enfolds you in its arms.” “How could you believe in these old fantastical lies, these myths, these emblems of the supernatural?” “My power would be your power.” “I have the dreadful feeling that I don’t exist at all.” “I shudder when I’m near you.” “You cannot pass back to the world of human warmth with your new eyes.” “Not a wild, mortal fear, but something cold like a hook in my side.” “I wish I could.” “You reflect your age differently. You reflect its broken heart.” “Killing is no ordinary act.” “Only the doll had a human face, only the doll.” “Well, I tell you I am no longer that passive, weak creature that has spun evil from evil until the web is vast and thick while I remain its stultified victim.” “It’s over!”
I don’t know. I still think about it, perhaps more frequently than you imagine. The things I saw in the blood, the things I felt… the awe and the terror. At the time, I believed it may have been real. That having tried to enter the holy of holies and see for myself, I’d been found wanting, and cast aside.
Now… I’m not so sure. It seems hubristic, doesn’t it? To think that such powers would interfere with us? I think that whatever it was that could create such spectacles, could remove you entirely from our ability to sense your presence in the world, it had power, immense power. And perhaps, after all, the being that sought you out was the Devil – I mean to say perhaps it was the entity which through its dealings with man had inspired the idea of the Devil, thousands of years ago. But God? Heaven? Christ?
Call me the puritan fool if you will, but if such divinity exists, I distrust the idea that beings such as ourselves would merit its attention.
I-want-my-IWTV 