[canvasandcoffin]

hi, how are you? why are people commenting on someone's else appearance.... you look gorgeeeous with the short hair!!!!!

-R.

Thank you! 😭 ❤️ You are a peach!

[canvasandcoffin]

As a fellow ex-owner of barbarian hair you definitely rock the new cut!

You look better than me tho, I look like a Renaissance boy with too many unruly curls and you look like a Goddess!

😭 I love you anon!

[canvasandcoffin]

I'm Changing the name of this blog!

Help me pick!

Marius' Favourite Ankle Bitter

Ankle Bitter de Romanus

Marius’ Tiny Torment

Druid Irritation Department

Marius’ Favourite Liability

Bite-Sized Roman Propaganda

Remaining time: 2 days 9 hours

[canvasandcoffin]

You hair is beautiful!🥰 But you already know that!💖

Thank you 😭🥹 people are just asshats

[canvasandcoffin]

I dont think I like the short hair

I don’t think I like the small dick energy you’re giving off, but I admire the commitment to proving it publicly.

[canvasandcoffin]

Since I offered a face reveal the other day, just thought I'd update it since I had my hair chopped off today!

[canvasandcoffin]

Marius de Romanus and the Tragedy of the Imperfect Creator

I have been rereading Blood and Gold for what must be the thousandth time, and something finally clicked into place for me.

Anne Rice tells us repeatedly that vampires struggle to create genuine art. They can imitate it. They can master technique, reproduce established forms and acquire extraordinary levels of craftsmanship. Given sufficient time, they can study anatomy, perspective, colour, composition and every technical principle upon which an artistic tradition is built. Yet something remains absent. Call it the soul. Call it mortality. Call it the human spark. Whatever name we give it, the vampires do not possess it in quite the same way.

This idea is nowhere more painfully explored than in Blood and Gold, particularly during Marius’s years in Renaissance Italy. He is surrounded by one of the most extraordinary periods of artistic production in European history. He witnesses the emergence of new approaches to the body, nature, antiquity, and individual identity. He watches human artists transform inherited visual languages into something startlingly alive.

And Marius, despite all his knowledge, cannot do what they do.

He can recognise greatness immediately. He understands the intellectual and technical foundations of Renaissance art. He possesses centuries of visual memory, an intimate knowledge of the ancient world these artists are attempting to recover, and a cultivated eye that few mortals could ever rival. He can perceive exactly why a work succeeds. He can identify its references, innovations and formal structures. He can even reproduce its outward qualities.

But he cannot generate the same interior life.

One can argue that human beings create because they are temporary. We create because out bodies decay, people die, civilisations collapse and memory fails. Art is shaped by desire, grief, devotion, eroticism, fear and the desperate knowledge that nothing can be preserved forever. Even religious art, however idealised, is produced by mortal hands attempting to give visible form to something they cannot fully comprehend.

Marius can study mortality, but he no longer inhabits it. He can remember being human, yet remembrance is not the same as participation. His distance from ordinary human existence gives him extraordinary critical judgement, but it also deprives him of the very instability from which art is born. He becomes the perfect connoisseur and the imperfect creator.

This is why vampires in the series so often become collectors, patrons, custodians and tastemakers rather than truly original artists.

They purchase paintings. They preserve manuscripts. They protect buildings and objects that would otherwise be destroyed. They fund artists, musicians and institutions. They surround themselves with the evidence of human creativity because they are drawn to precisely what they can no longer produce for themselves.

For years, as a working artist, I struggled to understand exactly what Marius meant when he lamented that his paintings lacked soul. The idea felt almost incomprehensible to me because I can perceive human presence in nearly everything people make. Even art I dislike contains evidence of intention. Even failed art reveals longing, ego, insecurity, anger, curiosity or the desire to communicate. A mediocre painting may still preserve the movement of a particular hand and the limitations of a particular mind. It tells us that someone stood before a surface and attempted to make thought visible.

Even dreadful contemporary art has a soul. It may be pretentious, incoherent, derivative or embarrassingly self-important, but its failures are human failures. Someone wanted something. Someone made a decision. Someone risked revealing the poverty or grandeur of their own interior world.

I could never properly imagine an image that possessed the appearance of art without that human residue. Now I can.

AI-generated imagery is the closest thing we have to vampire art. It can absorb styles, identify patterns and reproduce the recognisable surfaces of artistic traditions. It can produce an image that resembles an oil painting, a photograph, a Renaissance portrait or a nineteenth-century illustration. It can imitate lighting, composition, gesture and texture. It can even combine visual languages with astonishing speed.

It knows the appearance of artistic intention without possessing intention itself. That is precisely the horror at the centre of Marius’s failure. He can reproduce the language of human beauty while remaining estranged from its source. Like artificial intelligence, he possesses an immense archive. He can analyse, imitate and synthesise. He can identify the formal characteristics of greatness. Yet accumulated knowledge cannot manufacture the lived experience from which art emerges.

The result may be beautiful. It may be technically impressive. It may even deceive the viewer for a moment. But it is cold. AI imagery finally allowed me to visualise what he means when he says his art has no soul.

[canvasandcoffin]

I am still here, I'm just getting ready for a last minute trip to the states. I have to get ahead of some work within the next two weeks. But I am still here to protect our boy ❤️

[canvasandcoffin]

I think having Marius call me a “little fool” in a frustrated yet endearing way would fix me.

[fenicenera83]

𝑴𝒂𝒓𝒊𝒖𝒔 𝒅𝒆 𝑹𝒐𝒎𝒂𝒏𝒖𝒔 𝒂𝒑𝒑𝒓𝒆𝒄𝒊𝒂𝒕𝒊𝒐𝒏 𝒘𝒆𝒆𝒌 -𝐃𝐚𝐲 𝟑

𝑷𝒓𝒐𝒎𝒑𝒕: 𝑻𝒉𝒆 𝑺𝒑𝒓𝒊𝒏𝒈-𝑩𝒐𝒕𝒕𝒊𝒄𝒆𝒍𝒍𝒊/𝑴𝒂𝒓𝒊𝒖𝒔 𝒅𝒆 𝑹𝒐𝒎𝒂𝒏𝒖𝒔-𝑺𝒂𝒎𝒉𝒂𝒊𝒏

[canvasandcoffin]

I already know why you defend Marius and know your stuff so beautifully....

Because you're Pandora!

(Jokes aside, you're beautiful mun!)

How dare you, sir.

Nothing against Marius and Pandora as a ship. I adore her in her earlier years, before she allowed a small-cocked little tyrant to dictate her life (what was that guys name again??), then spent centuries playing increasingly elaborate games to lure Marius back, only to become furious that he failed to interpret the clues correctly.

My lady, you were a grown Roman woman with a fully developed frontal lobe, not a high-school pick me girl posting cryptic lyrics in the hope her ex would notice.

Still, being compared aesthetically to Pandora is an outrageous compliment, so thank you. I shall accept it with all the dignity I can muster.

[canvasandcoffin]

Precisely how much grovelling is required before the mun face reveal is unlocked?

Not much ;)

[canvasandcoffin]

// I am up late tonight to watch Scotland in the cup. Which airs at 2am in Scotland. So expect to see the drunk ramblings of a lunatic

[canvasandcoffin]

My favourite Latin phrase is:

Disco inferno.

Yes, that really is Latin.

Very roughly, it translates to “I learn through suffering.”

Which, frankly, feels less like a translation and more like the guiding principle of this entire blog.

[canvasandcoffin]

Headcanon: Marius de Romanus Cannot Dance (in the club)

There is a moment in the opening chapter of Blood and Gold that I do not believe we discuss nearly enough. Marius takes Thorne to a nightclub.

A nightclub. A modern nightclub, filled with flashing lights, loud music, alcohol, body glitter, and mortals making choices they would regret by breakfast. Marius takes Thorne there to dance, observe humanity, and eventually catch dinner.

Anne Rice informs us that women are drawn to both of them in these scene. Naturally, the expected interpretation is that they are captivated by his beauty, his supernatural magnetism, and the general presence of an extraordinarily tall blond immortals. And, to be fair, all of that is probably true.

However, I have a theory.

Those women were not approaching them because they were dancing well. They were approaching because there were dancing terribly. Now, before anyone becomes defensive, let me clarify that I absolutely believe Marius knows how to dance.

Marius can ballroom dance. Marius can waltz. Marius can probably perform every formal court dance introduced in Europe over the past two thousand years. Give him a polished marble floor, a live orchestra, a room full of aristocrats, and a partner who understands exactly where to place her hand, and he will be magnificent.

Of course he can dance.

He probably knows dances that no living historian has successfully reconstructed. He could perform a pavane so beautifully that an art historian would burst into tears. He could waltz with one hand behind his back. But dancing in a nightclub?

Absolutely not. There is simply no way. And we must remember that Blood and Gold was published in 2001.

Two thousand and one.

This is the era of Bootylicious. This is the era of the Christina Aguilera, Lil’ Kim, Mýa and Pink version of Lady Marmalade. This is the musical environment into which Anne Rice placed Marius de Romanus and expected us to believe he was functioning normally. Ain’t no way in hell!

I refuse to believe that Marius walked into a club while Beyoncé announced that her body was too bootylicious and immediately knew what to do with himself. What was he doing? What dance did he select? Did he attempt to find the rhythm? Was he nodding solemnly to the beat?

I know exactly what happened. Marius walked into that club with the confidence of an immortal who has survived empires, religious upheavals, wars, betrayals, fires, abductions, and several extremely complicated personal relationships. He looked around at the mortals dancing and thought, Yes. I understand this. He did not understand it.

He probably began by shifting his weight from one foot to the other. Very slowly. Entirely off beat. There was no dance master. There were no clear steps.

There was only Christina Aguilera shouting “Voulez-vous coucher avec moi?” while Marius stood beneath a strobe light trying to determine whether the people around him were dancing or having some kind of collective medical emergency.

And then there is Thorne. Poor Thorne. Thorne has only recently emerged from centuries beneath the ice. The modern world is already overwhelming enough. There are cars, electric lights, modern clothing, and social customs he does not understand. Then Marius takes him to a nightclub. Imagine being Thorne in that moment. I know, I know he was traveling around via outer body experience when he was under the ice, but come on!

You have awakened into a world that feels completely alien. You are trusting this ancient and powerful vampire to guide you through modern civilisation. Marius presents himself as cultivated, experienced, and entirely in command. Then Lady Marmalade begins playing and Marius starts dancing like somebody’s elegant divorced father at a wedding.

Marius has never lacked confidence in his own presentation. This is a man who has spent centuries commissioning art, designing houses, selecting clothing, educating fledgling vampires, and assuming that his aesthetic judgement is naturally superior. He would not think, Perhaps I am not good at this particular style of dancing. He would think, The modern style is rather inelegant, but I have adapted admirably.

He is tall, blond, blue-eyed, impeccably dressed, and probably wearing something that looks absurdly expensive without displaying a visible brand. He is impossible not to notice.

The women saw a devastatingly handsome man dancing with all the natural rhythm of column and experienced one of the most powerful emotions known to humanity: “Aww. Look at him. He’s trying.”

That is the energy.

They were not seduced by his dancing. The were seduced by his physical appearance. And I don't blame them. I'd stumble over to him too!

[canvasandcoffin]

Just... Just going to reblog this with um... It's... It's All Star... in Latin.. Just.. yeah

[canvasandcoffin]

// I have to make an unexpected trip back to the States and, unfortunately for everyone involved, it coincides with the World Cup.

Now, if you’re not Scottish, you may not understand what this means. What it means is that I am about to board a plane that is essentially a flying pub. There is absolutely no chance that Edinburgh to Boston isn’t packed wall-to-wall with Scots. Not one. The odds are lower than seeing the sun in Glasgow.

And I know exactly how this is going to go. Everyone will board quietly. Respectfully. Civilised, even. Then somewhere over the Atlantic, one bloke named Davie will order his fourth whisky and make eye contact with another bloke named Davie.

A nod will be exchanged. A sacred pact will be formed.

And suddenly someone in the back will start singing Flower of Scotland. Within thirty seconds the entire cabin will join in. Within two minutes half the passengers will be standing.

Within five minutes someone will be explaining Bannockburn to a deeply confused American tourist who only asked where the toilet was.

I won’t even be embarrassed. I’ll be right there with them, singing at full volume, ready to fight England despite the fact they’re not currently involved in any way.

It’s what our ancestors would have wanted. Anyway. I’ll be stateside soon.

[canvasandcoffin]

Musings on Armand

This is, and remains, a pro-Marius blog. But I have been rereading The Vampire Armand, and there is a part of Armand’s story that has been sitting heavily with me for days. Not because it is particularly violent by Vampire Chronicles standards. We have all read worse in these books. It stays with me because it is painfully human.

I think a lot of us who read Anne Rice have imagined what immortality would be like. We picture the grand things. The centuries of history. The art. The travel. The endless accumulation of knowledge. The freedom. The romance of it all. And if I am being honest, I think I would adapt frighteningly well. Perhaps too well.

Most people who follow this blog know me primarily as the annoying Marius apologist who occasionally emerges from the archives waving Roman history at people. What many do not know is that my life has already involved a great deal of loss. I lost both of my parents before thirty. My sibling and I are strangers who happen to share DNA. I have left behind entire lives more than once. Different countries. Different homes. Different careers. Different versions of myself.

I have learned how to pack everything I own into a handful of suitcases and start over somewhere new. I have learned that grief does not stop the world from moving. I have learned that people leave. Sometimes by choice. Sometimes by circumstance. Sometimes because death takes the decision away from everyone involved. You adapt because you have to. You survive because there is no alternative. And somewhere along the way, you become very good at letting go.

I do not become attached to places easily. I do not become attached to possessions. I do not even become attached to most people. Not because I do not care. Quite the opposite. Because somewhere deep down, you learn that nothing is guaranteed to stay. So when people ask whether I could handle immortality, my answer is usually yes. I think I could.

The loneliness would hurt. The constant loss would hurt. But I think I could survive it. Except for one thing. One person. Like Armand had Riccardo, I have my own version.

The person I would answer the phone for at three in the morning without question. The person I would get on a plane for without question. The person I would fight for. The person who feels less like a friend and more like a fundamental piece of my identity.

And that’s why the Riccardo storyline destroys me. Because when people discuss that scene, they often focus on the horror of the act itself. Armand kills Riccardo. Yes. That is horrific. But for me, the true horror begins long before that. The starvation. The isolation. The systematic destruction of his ability to resist. The fact that he is caged like an animal and deprived of every shred of agency. The fact that his abusers understand exactly what they are doing. And then they force him into an impossible situation. Survive.

Psychologically speaking, this is almost impossible to overstate. Human beings construct their identity through relationships. We know who we are because of the people around us. Our memories are tied to other people. Our sense of self is tied to other people. Our emotional regulation is tied to other people. Riccardo was not merely Armand’s best friend. Riccardo was one of the final surviving pieces of Armand’s humanity.

Would I survive losing my best friend? The person who has been part of my life since kindergarten? The person who remembers versions of me that no one else alive does? Barely.

I would probably keep breathing. I would get up, go to work, answer messages, and do all the mundane things grief cruelly allows you to keep doing. But a part of me would go with her. There is no poetic way to dress that up. It is simply true.

But would I survive if it was me who ended her? No. There is not a version of me that survives that. Not really. I do not mean my body would stop functioning. I mean something essential in me would break beyond repair.

That is where Armand’s story becomes almost unbearable. It is not simply that he loses Riccardo. It is that Riccardo dies by his hand, after Armand has been starved, caged, broken down, and stripped of every possible choice.

Grief is devastating, but guilt is different. Grief says, “they are gone.” Guilt says, “you are the reason.” And I do not know how anyone carries that for a lifetime, let alone for centuries.