Bleeding Heart

ind. sel. anti-canon. jasper whitlock

[bledhard]

An independent & selective portrayal of JASPER WHITLOCK from the Twilight series penned by Train (30s|They/Them). This is a depiction that is removed from its canon due to inevitable divergence and disinterest in sticking with SMeyer’s content. I am at my core — and have always been — a hater, so this is a very anti SMeyer space. I treat the source material as if it were a horror story so uncomfortable topics will appear on this blog.

I DO NOT avoid Jasper’s time in the confederacy nor try to rewrite or rework it (ex. write him as a union soldier), I just try to do all that actual character work SMeyers is allergic to. Meaning that while Jasper was a confederate the course of his life has lead him to regret that and hold his old ideology and similar ones in contempt. I’ll extrapolate elsewhere but here’s your heads up.

Themes + Inspirations: They Things They Carried, Piranesi, 30 Days of Night, Dragon Age (1 statute and 1 person’s oc), Sinners, Atun-Shei Films, The Magnus Archives, Weird Fiction, Control (of the Self and Others), Empathy as Healing, Empathy as Horror, Sandor Clegane, Rogue from the X-Men, Mike Flanagan’s body of work, Exploration of an Alien Nature, Philosophy, Compassion, Violence, to be Cruel and Kind, Old Dogs Learning New Tricks, Greco-Roman Statues

I ask that in your replies you give me some kind of information about your muse’s emotional state. This can be in the text itself or in notes in the tags, whatever works best for you, but as Jasper an empath I need to know what the vibes are pretty consistently so I know how it’s effecting him and plan his responses.

Rules. ✴︎ Verses. (wip) ✴︎ Vampire Biology. ✴︎ Empathy. ✴︎ Basics. ✴︎ Longer Bio Opens. ✴︎ Memes. ✴︎ Calls. ✴︎ Wishlist. sideblog. ✴︎ scar reference (important)

blogroll: @sacrifaced @feralflawed @woefell @eyespin @punkasite @darkerthrills coven: wornkindness , sanguirend , lycancursed

blog runs heavily on queue and currently at a rate of ONE post per day

[octoberbrunette]

[palearizona]

his tone is placating at best. condescending at worst. her eyes narrow as she tries to figure out if he's pushing his mood control powers onto her on top of that reassurance. "i'm trying to figure out if you're using your mood control thingy on me. i'd work on your tone though if you’re trying to pass more as human. because you kinda sound like a therapist. unless that’s what you’re going for…” jasper’s yellow eyes are perfectly rounded, and he looks witheringly uncomfortable. she would’ve found it funny if she wasn’t feeling the exact same way. it doesn’t help that he feels her emotions, which only amplifies his. the irony of it all.

bella rolls her eyes at his non-apology. “you’re a vampire. i’m not faulting you for your nature.” unlike some people. “you can’t fight what you are. carlisle is admirable for trying a different way, but like edward told me, you’re all never satisfied and never at peak strength. and it’s obvious, because you’re not getting the right kind of blood.” she gives him a pointed look. but now they’re getting somewhere. at least he’s not sugar coating things now.

“if you’re the least invested, why are you here now?” she wonders out loud. “edward and i aren’t even together anymore. i’m technically not your problem anymore.”

[bledhard]

"I'm not. I promised to try to refrain from using it while here with you. As for sounding like a therapist — perhaps my conversational skills with humans are a bit lacking." More like non-existent. Bella was the only human he really talked to beyond purely pragmatic interaction. Emmett would say he was more than rusty. Jasper rarely saw reason to practice the skill. He never had much to say to humans.

As he looks at her, pale and fragile eating her ridiculous ravioli, siren pulse dancing temptingly through those lovely purple-blue veins delicately spidering along under that paper thin skin he gauges things. Is there a good way to say this? Does it matter? Does he care? He comes to the conclusion that it doesn't and that after the way Edward handled things the vampiric concept of "delicacy" was probably worse than any bluntness they could muster. But Edward was always his own special brand of delusional, he had a way of twisting things that furthered his own derangement and sucked everyone else in. It was how this mess came to pass at all. She should have been dead long before the nomads came into the area.

"We have an obligation to you. The only reason James attacked you was because we allowed you into our world and so we must take responsibility. Victoria and Laurent still live. Laurent may have gone to Alaska but I have no faith that a few months with the Denali coven will overturn years of companionship and Victoria will seek revenge. With the Cullens gone you're the easier target, and the one that would hurt the most to lose — for the others. Once the situation with Victoria is resolved I'll leave and return to the coven."

He doesn't out right state it but the implication is there, that should something befall her he will be the least impacted and that is why he was sent to stay. It might have been phrased amongst them as punishment for the party, or because of his superior skills in this area, but the reality was he was sent because they were immortals cursed with perfect memory and none of them wanted to live with in person memory of her murder. Because if Victoria succeeded the reality was that Bella would be tortured to death and while Jasper certainly didn't want that for the poor girl and would pity her if it did, it was no skin off his nose if it came to pass.

[bledhard]

the way i vacillate between saying that jcb is NOT jasper's fc and pacing around chain smoking, saying "this is IT! this is IT!" as i staple pics of him to my insanity wall.

[sweetfridays]

♡ JAMIE CAMPBELL BOWER wired

[bledhard]

something i'm thinking about because i see some consistent trends in how jasper is portrayed in fics is how jasper acts around maría/that relationship/the loss of it. there's usually this energy there that idk i feel like it at times gives jasper more resilience than he should have. a common issue in the jasper appreciator sector is an overwhelming need to have him be like super cool and tough and "the Major" "the God of War" etc etc when like... the reality is more that he's an under-educated 19yo who was murdered, transformed and groomed from his first moments as a vampire to be subservient to one person, maría.

jasper only knows two things as a newborn, to kill (human and vampire) and to Obey María. he then discovers and figures out how to use his gift which insulates him from a lot of things but can also make him weak to them. the emotions of others actively impact him as much as he can impact them. which is why i'm kind of glad i've been thinking about obsession, seeing clips, thinking about how pitiable wish!nikki is and finally watching it because i think there's something here that hits to the emotional core of jasper for me. like i can't stop thinking of this line from the coraline movie where the other mother is screaming "don't leave me! i'll die without you!"

jasper is someone who has been groomed and indoctrinated his whole life, by the older men he herded with, the bossmen who lied about minorities, by the confederate army, by maría. he thought he was lesser, that he wasn't as smart as his "betters" and so he trusted what they told him. he learned to allow others to hold his reigns and took some unwitting comfort in the lack of control over his life, especially with maría. he stayed with her and stayed loyal until she began to plot against him. jasper has never had to try and build himself outside of someone's control, not really. it's especially damning in the books since he has maybe a decade before alice finds him and he's back under someone's control again.

jasper is someone who is in many ways hyper competent and isolationist, but he's independent the same way someone who's been badly burned fears fire. emotions and social bonds are what he feeds on but they also are the thing that hurt him the most. he can get high off another's ecstasy, drunk off their lust, and while he can control how he effects others there does not seem to be an off switch for them effecting him. he is at the mercy of the emotions around him and i think especially given his vampiric upbringing he has trouble with self-control/restrain and defaults to wanting someone to impose structure on his life.

at his worst he is very obsessive and excessively clingy. he is violent, manipulative, terrifying and will alter himself and you to make sure things stay as he needs them to remain stable. maría literally denied him the ability to regulate himself and instead made her the center of his mental/emotional stability. without her he's bouncing between a brick wall, a hurricane and a black hole.

[djotime]

Obsession 2026, dir. Curry Barker

[bledhard]

i've never felt better about having read the soo.kie stack.house books up to book 11......

[bledhard]

on the topic of jasper vampire gifts in iw.tv land...... tbh it would probably not be utterly insane if he had the killing gift..... if only bc like... he does be out here killing a lot of people.... would not be weird for him to figure that one out.....

[bledhard]

it's very hard to explain but after watching obsession last night, there's something about how wish nikki moves/acts that makes me think of jasper. like that unsettling "you can see them trying to tweak their human performance as you speak to them" thing she does is very jasper.

[alysmond]

OBSESSION + Nikki in shadow

[bledhard]

Thoughts on Jasper in the vampire chronicles universe (show only bc I Ain't Reading All That):

for one i can very confidently say he doesn't like pretty much ANY of them. he does hang out with armand but don't ask him why given that armand is lowkey diabolical (it's because while he can't articulate it he can feel the similarities in their emotional landscapes and also he reminds jasper of both himself AND maría.) also i think he would fuck with claudia. idk i just think he'd look at her and be like "damn. she's nuts" and then put her on the "don't immediately kill" list lol.

he doesn't like any of them MAINLY because they are all just fucking EMOTIONAL NIGHTMARES. like no one here is emotionally stable, not even REMOTELY and it makes his life so much harder so he hates being around them. he also just thinks some of them are fucking assholes lol but that part tends to vary, mainly his issue is that their mental illnesses make his worse.

he doesn't have any of the gifts like the cloud gift. if he is eligible for something like the fire gift i'd say is up for grabs, in that he's not from such an elite lineage he could show that shit asap. so idk call him in another 200 years and we'll see if he's got it.

all of his dark gifts are mainly mental like his empathetic powers, he's also very adept at controlling others -- especially vampires -- from his decades of controlling fledglings for war. but like, other than that he's pretty normal. his combat skills aren't magic they're just from life, his only real non-standard power is his weird emotional shit.

i don't really think anyone in this world likes him much lol. like for one he does have the reputation of effectively being a warlord for like almost a century which.... is not great, especially if you care at all about the great laws n shit.

but also he's VERY volatile now that he has no one holding his leash which is just... well no one wants to deal with that lol. jasper is completely at odds on what to do with himself and barely even sees other vampires as people so his black periods are a very real danger to those around him.

i think also given the love of beauty which is a Thing with vamps he is not well liked due to his disfigurations from the wars. which i will still not put any time into justifying in this universe. i know vampires heal to their defaults and don't really scar but that is a detriment to jasper's whole character so it's Not Real For Him. idk he just got Hurt The Most Bad Ever Or Something. don't worry about it. but they're deffo something that get used against him at times.

he doesn't think shit like the great conversion is a good idea as a vampire who has spent a lot of time living in large groups of vampires fighting over territory/food supply. he just sees it as the globalization of the southern wars so yeah he's really against it lol.

jasper exists on both the fringes of human and vampiric society from the 40s on and tends to avoid covens. he's totally aimless and because of that dangerous as he was actively trained wrong by his maker and has never existed before that point without a Goal or someone holding his reigns. so he's kind of like if a fighting dog went feral and had a stock portfolio. he's gotten better over the decades but one wrong thing can set him off into psycho mode again.

in this post 40s era he has similar issues re: eating and morality to louis but his are far more intense and he swings from not caring at all to nearly ending his own life over what he has to do to keep living. his own emotions and sense of the world/morality/etc is very fractured and confused.

he's both trying to be an independent person and also lowkey looking for someone to give his leash to so he can go back to being something mindless again but also if you try and take his leash he WILL lash out. very "throw ball. no take ball. throw ball" coded.

[bledhard]

okay i am BACK after a bit of irl time, offline hobbies, reading and mainlining all of iwtv/tvl (save the s3 finale i'll do that todayish) and all of akosk. so i'm CAUGHT UP ON MY THINGS.

and i also have a better sense on how to have jasper and david (and others but those 2 especially) should interact with people/exist in the vc universe.

[ymutate]

Gérard Schlosser, 1931 - 2022, was a French figurative painter

[lucy-harker]

NOSFERATU (2024) dir. Robert Eggers The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn - Part 1 (2011) dir. Bill Condon

[bledhard]

jasper has a very complicated relationship with life — not just human life but vampiric life as well. As in, he has spent so much of his life seeing vampires as things to make, use and kill or simply just kill that he struggles to see them as people, just like he struggles to see humans as people after decades of feeding on them in total frenzies.

his ability to feel their emotions is usually the catalyst for him jolting into seeing them as people but at the same time.... he's spent decades disassociating to cope with the horrors of his existence so he's still able to slip into that state of mind, in fact it's very like he will when things become too tumultuous, especially since when he does engage with his emotions and what others feel it usually sends him spiraling into deep depressions.

[bledhard]

in honor of the fourth and the fireworks i just heard:

jasper doesn't like the time around the 4th of july because the fireworks give him flashbacks to ww2