Eyes in the night

[belanis]

Damn, writing from a vampire's POV is harder than you'd think. I mean, take the colour grey-blue. What would a vampire be reminded of by that colour? NOT a cloudy sky or the surface of a lake - after all, he would only see them as black. What, in the night, is grey and blue?

And he can't go around painting landscapes very easily, either.

Comments

[pikku_gen]

Wet snow on early winter night?

And depending if your vampires have night-vision, they can well see different colours in the dark than us humans. I once tried "tinting" everything more red, in way of heat vision, when I had to write in a night-creature's POV. (Yes, I definitely had to. There was no other option but to use a night-thingie's POV. Absolutely. X) )

Try walking out in the night just searching for colours. That's what I do.

[belanis]

BTW, what's with the icon in this context? :D :D

[pikku_gen]

Toinen vaihtoehto olisi ollut tämä. Mulla on ihan liian vähän ikonitilaa, mutta uusiminen menköön siiheksi kun maksan tilini.

[mitzi007]

A vein?

What's the context?

[belanis]

Gen, yeah, colours where humans can't see them is the way I think I'll go. Like the earliest of early dawns, when a human doesn't even realise the sky is lightening. I mean, they jolly well have to have night vision, don't they? :)

Mitzi, the context is eyes. Hey, it's a romance, innit. Would a vein ever be blue-grey? :P

[belanis]

Where is my *grin* in the previous comment? :-O

[mitzi007]

Would a vein ever be blue-grey?

The ones in my wrists are. Of course my grandmother always claimed we used to be old landed gentry.

Actually I like the idea that a vampire sees gray-blue eyes and his first association is veins on a pale skin. Could work in a creepy kind of way and for me it would feel realistic.

[samy]

An interesting dilemma. I can off-hand think of two major routes to go.

1) Have the vampire recall colors from back when it was human.
2) Only go with things that can be brought indoors and seen in lamplight.

The first one is obviously much easier and less work. The latter is much more cunning writing, IMO, but then you of course have to constantly devote thought to it. There are still quite a few things that can be brought indoors, though. Flora and fauna, for instance. Grey-blue could remind of a particular species of wolf (particularly apt for vampires) or seafood. It could be reminiscent of a particular flower (I don't know which flower would be blue-grey, but certainly there must be some?). Animals, foods, flowers, all these can be brought indoors and provide a wide variety of colors to use.

[belanis]

1) is, as I noted, a bit of a cop-out... The same with photos and films that the vampire would have seen: borrowing human senses. I don't want to do that any more than I have to.
2) will, I think, be my major source of simile. And I'll certainly do what Gen suggested, go for a walk and keep my eyes open. Food would be appropriate in some ways *grin* but if you haven't eaten anything for centuries, would that be the first thing to occur to you?

(btw, this vampire is a cat person ;)