It’s the *~quality~* of the masses of my adoring fans that is so heartwarming and sweet and just… what is a curator of a museum w/o makers & appreciators of fine art? What is an actor w/o an audience? I collect and share, you all enjoy it, it’s a symbiotic relationship ❤
[X] ^I’ve always loved this moment in the movie, bc you can tell she is a quality Parisian lady, she can see beyond the grotesquerie, that there’s beauty in the breakdown.
Dear Anon – I don’t think you quite understand how this lot operates.
If I were to go ahead and spank one of them, I wouldn’t get respect so much as I’d likely get a line of them out the door waiting for a turn. Quite the group of masochists in this nighttime world of immortality. Never considered that when I was writing reports on them for the Talamasca.
1791 was the year I fell down the stairs and onto Lestat’s fangs. Oops.
First and foremost, the hunger has been the hardest adjustment I’ve had to make as a vampire. What few vices I indulged in my mortality were never so prevalent – not to the point where I felt so commanded to answer the desire for them. I could control them. Yet the hunger is in control of me more than I am of it. I’m not used to being slave to something inside myself. That experience is new for me.
Another adjustment is certainly the sense of time. When I was alive I measured the passage of days, months, years with regular habit. Even if it was just noting the date upon a newspaper. I observed time, I respected it, and felt very keen about the necessity to keep track. Now, it occasionally surprises me when I hear a date. The nights tend to blend together. I feel outside of time in a way I’d never done when alive. It doesn’t feel so oppressive or so precious to me anymore.
There are many other aspects of adjustment I’ve had to make since my turning yet these two are by far the most major developments that I consider worth mentioning.
To hone your psychic powers for blocking out vampires, it takes a considerable period of time devoted to practice and a strengthening of your personal gifts. Also, the success rate depends entirely upon the vampire in question. Many have never honed their own psychic powers and are only able to read surface thoughts of humans. A vampire who has mastered their abilities (Armand, as an example, is a master of those gifts) would be considerably more difficult to keep out.
Your mind is only as open as you permit it to be. It has been described in the Chronicles how vampires keep their thoughts obscured from others. Images, a closed door, or sounds and sensations intended to confuse the intruding mind. My own psychic gifts were formidable enough towards the end of my mortal life that I was able to pick up on the thoughts of vampires and mask my own from them. I’d had a lifetime of practice.
My preferred imagery is that of a jungle when I must guard my thoughts without much notice — like in an emergency. I scatter my thoughts throughout it like drops of rain. By the time they have made any progress in their trek to find them, I am usually gone and beyond their lasting mental reach. My standard imagery is a library. In that defensible mental place, I keep my thoughts and memories in the pages of the books, and a countless number of blank ones as handy camouflage.
If you want to be successful, then you should work upon your own method. Use things that are so familiar to you in your physical world that they’d be mentally easy to grasp. Music or radio static are simple things because they require no imagery. Those two are rudimentary skills that are taught for those first learning their gifts in the Talamasca. Or basic visual images. A closed door, a locked gate. Literal things.
Work on strengthening those blocks in your mind and keeping out a vampire will become easy over time.
In the future can we please just agree as a fandom to keep issues that could be easily handled privately private?
There was an issue with this recently that caused someone to leave the community. Calling another writer out in a public display of personal unhappiness doesn’t strengthen this fandom – it weakens it and causes those writers already at their limit to question whether the Tumblr community is even worth continuing with. No one deserves to be made a public spectacle.
If you have issues, take it to that individual in their askbox. That’s what they are there for. Resolving issues on a one on one basis seems a far better solution than throwing anyone else under the bus for everyone else to see. That makes things highly uncomfortable for those of us not involved in the situations.
This has become a disconcerting habit in this fandom lately and I am only speaking up to make an appeal that it please stop. Everyone is free to have a differing opinion, of course. I normally tend to be quiet about these things but this trend is maddening to see and uncomfortable to be exposed to.
Question for the mun: who do you ship David with? And how hard to you ship them?
(I’d send an Ask like a normal question but for some reason the button is inaccessible when I’m… not on my home ‘puter…)(WHO IS A BAD GIRL DOING THIS FROM THE AWFFICE)(spoiler alert: it’s me)
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OOC: (You BAD GIRL. <3)
The H.M.S. Noship: Okay. So, for my take on David, I haven’t really settled him into any romantic relationships on Tumblr. Part of this is because I play him still at a point where he is working through his transitions of mortality and immortality. David’s having to relearn himself with this second ‘restart’, while also watching the last threads of his mortal life dissolving (i.e. All those people from the Talamasca that knew him when he was alive, that he visits as they die one by one.) around him. It’s more of a struggle for him than his outward calm and demeanour indicates. The idea of settling into a relationship is far from his thoughts.
That said, here are the ships in order of my hardcore-ness:
H.M.S. I Wanna Do Bad Things With You: Armand/David
I put this one at the top of the list, and not for the obvious reasons that most people think. Yes, David showed an inclination for youthful people in his mortal relationships. However, that is hardly relevant now when he himself looks to be only in his mid-twenties. In fact — while Armand is physically attractive — the physical aspect of it isn’t what draws David to him.
Armand has proven himself a formidable psychic presence. His illusions, his ability to lock Ancients out of his mind. He’s not an outwardly emotional individual. Armand is balanced by all of the experiences of his life, and the intrigue of all those internalized mysteries appeals to David.
David loves Lestat. Despite everything that happened, he loves him. The obstacle is the loss of control and trust that exists for them now. In his friendship with Lestat while he was mortal, David felt that they were coming together as peers, as equals. That Lestat was considerably older than him didn’t matter: He was able to advise him, to lend his opinion as a mortal man with a lifetime of experience.
Lestat never belonged to David. In immortality, this is no different and he knows this. David would be required to adapt himself to sharing Lestat with other people if they were going to have a successful romantic relationship. They’d also need to go through a period of time where Lestat rebuilt that trust before David allowed Lestat to make him so vulnerable again. Love and intimacy are a vulnerability of self, after all.
H.M.S. Brother From Another Mother: Louis/David
These two went through a roller coaster of emotions together after Memnoch. David was still new in the Blood, and Lestat was suddenly gone beyond their reach. They had to lean on one another to get through it. David built up such tender feeling towards Louis while all of this was happening. He found in Louis an ideal person to spend the quiet time with. They both have that quiet in common; the peace of just spending a night reading, not seeking excitement.
The situation with Merrick was heartbreaking. Not because of David (under the influence of the spell) fearing so much that he was losing her to Louis but due to the heartache he clearly demonstrates in believing that Louis was violating his trust selfishly in pursuit of the woman. The end of the chapter where they ask David to leave always breaks my heart. His threat to Louis seems like David bracing himself to lose Louis too in all of the mess.
H.M.S. I Don’t Even Know, Bro: ??/David
I haven’t explored too many major ships beyond those. I could see David settling happily with people like Jesse, Daniel, even Marius. Those with a similar appreciation for knowledge or with their own unique intellect. And of course I ship Aaron Lightner/David Talbot BROSHIP FOREVER.
I-want-my-IWTV 