hello! in case you couldn’t tell i’m very normal about passajer…. i have many many thoughts about them and i’d love to hear yours too (think of these as my headcanons & theories about your au haha, i don’t mean to influence canon)
Not to be macabre but i think ken would be very aware of the downsides of immortality. And has probably prepared a contingency plan (read: a way out) for himself and tilly in case anything goes wrong. In general you often see characters be portrayed as power hungry consumed by the fear of death as they chase immortality, eventually losing themselves, but i think ken is just there to have a Good Time for as long as he can and would be quite chill with death if it’s peaceful. Like oh well, it was a good run
Ken turning tilly is very fluffy and tilly being turned otherwise is very good angst potential. If it is the latter maybe it’s from a particularly rough job where she has to take down the target by hand. But gets bit. Or something. And for both there are so many possibilities… does she keep working? Do they meet from her job? Is ken a hit/contractor? Wahhh…. It reminds me a lot of a picture but I can’t send it here
This has made me want to get into vampire the masquerade.
Where does vampirism fit into the magic system? Do they have special abilities/powers that count as problematically using magic, or are they sort of exempt?
Outfits… i think tilly would very much lean into the gothic velvet vibe as many of her clothes already do (s2 botc.. tilly you will never not be gorgeous to me), but i have no idea how ken would dress since as you mentioned he’s not really a ‘traditional’ type of vampire and is just chilling however he wants to
very sorry for bombarding your inbox... They are just. So.
don’t let my kentilly brain deceive you, i’m also v interested in what everyone else is doing and the general worldbuilding, hmu to chat about it anytime <3
for the first item: yes i agree! i think ken does genuinely have a selfish and ambitious side, but i also feel like being a vampire for so long has (unintuitively) dulled that edge. i think he's a lot more "at peace" with vampirism than the average vampire.
for the second: i'm starting to lean more for tilly being turned outside of ken, because i love angst. i imagine she kinda goes on a bender after that for a while before eventually getting back to work since she's gotta kill people for food anyway, might as well get paid for it, and i Do like the idea of them meeting because ken has a hit on him. i can just imagine tilly sort of stumbling into it without the normal grace and poise she has for those things and just trying to brute force it and failing kind of pathetically. this is all in an endearing way. and ken is only as much of an asshole about it as he is about anything, which is a little bit, but in a fun way!
about vampire the masquerade: me too! i never really got into it, my late girlfriend was really into it and i always feel like i would like it a lot...
about vampires in this setting: it's all very blurry but i imagine that vampirism comes occasionally as a side effect of certain powerful magic. i don't think vampires themselves are particularly more powerful than any typical mortal, but are often in communities more exposed to True Magic and thus have access to more power than average. i also think there is a very rich vampire culture that focuses on hiding that magical knowledge and making it seem like "oh that's not magic vampires are just naturally like that. wink wink." but i do think there is a more "natural" increase in most things like healing factor and strength and senses. this also explains why there is often such a difference in power between pre-established vampires and ones that have recently been turned.
i imagine that tilly spends a long time moping around trying to activate her cool new vampire powers and getting really upset that she can't. luckily for her she is not unique and it's just because vampires don't really have powers. they are immortal though which is nice.
i think vampires often try to Get Around the general anti-magic policies by pretending their abilities are caused by their affliction which is out of their control. which is somewhat true, but not really. i think the efficacy of this strategy is variable depending on the local governments of an area, and also extremely variable on the conduct of the vampire themselves. some places are just more accepting of it than others based on how the vampires there conduct themselves.
as for outfits... i have difficulty describing them and must draw outfits out eventually. a lot of the plot (which barely exists) sort of operates around interacting with nobility, where the style is totally Freaking Weird-- i think tilly dresses in a lot of different ways depending on what kind of job she's doing, but i imagine after meeting with ken and learning Magic Vampire Bullshit she feels a lot more confident to dress in ways that draw attention to her. it's just like, if you're an assassin and you're like five foot nothing, you tend to go for the espionage approach. but now she doesn't have to anymore and she can be gloriously self indulgent with her cool vampire boyfriend. it hurts to see others living your dream...
i always imagine ken in sort of a swashbucklery vibe but not very well put together at all. oftentimes his clothing will not match itself. he's very eclectic looking. oh also lots of oversized dress shirts because real ken does this and i can't take it away from him.
and also don't worry! i love the enthusiasm and the au is very loose right now, crowdsourcing thoughts about it is incredibly helpful. #teamworkmakesthedreamwork