which is largely concerned with vampires

[faeriemaiden]

Attention particularly to goddessreason: there is a film coming out in September about John Keats and Fanny Brawne, and it looks spiffing. Unfortunately neither of them are vampires in it (no word on Byron however), but one cannot have everything, I suppose.

The sun went down yesterday in a tangle of after-storm clouds and a pale bloom of light, and the rain-

Comments

[lady_moriel]

Idea: it's semi-impossible for a human to understand the vampire mindset really well because vampires aren't human, therefore even Mr. Caruthers, having lived with them and all, would have a hard time doing so. But. Seeing as vampire things and vampire magic tend to involve blood, what if a considerable part of learning this black magic that he signed up for involved drinking vampire blood? Not much of it, obviously, but it would be a pretty regular thing, I imagine, enough that while he certainly wasn't turned, he was still sort of...steeped in vampirism, the vampire way of thinking, vampire stories really since all these stories/memories are in the blood. I'm sure he wouldn't be getting very distinct stories from individual vampires, for reasons I think you've talked about, but it would still be...well, enough of a composite of the way those stories/memories form/are processed/something that he has more of a sense than anyone else does of the vampire mindset. Because, I imagine, the vast majority of thralls--whatever their motivation for becoming thralls--don't ever get out, and the few that do are so far into black magic as to be irredeemable and totally useless to anyone who might want to fight vampires. So in that sense, anyway, Mr. Caruthers would be...well, special, since it would be the long-term drinking of vampire blood that would be important rather than a one-off "yeah, I went to a vampire brothel a couple times" thing.

Of course he's going to need a good reason for wanting this kind of magic in the first place and being willing to do something really stupid to get it, since only a really strong reason for wanting/needing power would convince him to become a vampire thrall. Although if he's, like, deep in angst by that point already, he might want to be bitten or whatever because he thinks he deserves it, or...something. And of course if he was that determined to get this power in the first place, he might well be convinced that staying a thrall is the only way to get it even though it's more likely to kill him, so something pretty awful would have to happen to convince him to turn on the vampires, give up the drive for this kind of power, whatever.