i love you gothic literature. i love you gothic romance. i love you vampires and blood. i love you ghosts and phantoms. i love you unsettling themes. i love you fangs in the neck. i love you religious imagery. i love you manors and crypts. i love you cemeteries and haunts. i love you doomed narratives. i love you rot and decay. i love you centuries-long yearning. i love you all consuming love. i love you hunger as desire. i love you monstrous intimacy. i love you cynicism of the human experience. i love you monsters unaware of their horrors until confronted with them.
this song but it’s v!owen and v!louis OR v!owen and v!legs cuz it most definitely works for both ships and uhh TRIGGER WARNING
“Love hang herself
With the bedsheets in her cell
Threw myself on fires for you
Ten good reasons to stay alive
Ten good reasons that I can’t find”
Both Louis and Legs doom themselves, to some extent, in their own deaths. Louis stays in a town as discontent and suspicion grows. He LITERALLY threw himself on fire for Owen. But in the end, his love for Owen wasn’t enough to break his own morals to fight back. Legs, on the other hand, quite literally killed himself with a third party. The third line instead refers for the humans in town, who he died for.
“Oh, give me a reason to be beautiful
So sick in his body so sick in his soul
Oh, give me one reason to be beautiful
Oh and everything I am”
The first line of the chorus is about Louis. The sick and lowly lumberjack finds somebody, somebody, and it’s beautiful and a reason to move forward. The second is about his vampirism, and his personhood. He’s ill as a human, and then he’s turned and (especially in his case) has to deal with this curse. But more than that, his grief makes him a twisted person. He’s cruel and mean and sick in the soul. The third line is that continued search for Louis, post massacre, where he can truly find no reason to move on. In his horrible, beautiful suffering.
“Love hates you
I lived my life in ruins for you
And for all your secrets kept
I squashed the blossom and the blossoms dead”
After his crash out, Owen vows to become Louis’ teeth and claws. Even though he knew that Louis was nonviolent, he still carries out violence in his name. In Legundo’s case, it describes the episode 6 divorce. Owen continuously makes decisions that harm the humans, despite caring about at least one of them. But Legs, who was supposed to be trusted about Louis, squished their blossoming relationship by utilizing his name. So the attachments gone, and Owen makes sure it’s dead.
“Miles and miles of perfect skin
I swear, I said, I fit right in
I fit right in your perfect skin
I cannot breathe”
Owen fails to become the person he dreamed about being with Louis after his death, and Louis’ legacy suffocates him. These lyrics also work for The Constant Bloodletting Struggle (TM) of trying to get the other to flip sides. You could fit in, you could be perfect. And your path is your undoing.
“Oh and everything I am will be bought and sold
Oh and everything I am will turn hard and cold.”
The first line is about the promise for a better life. Both Louis and Legs promise Owen the idea of happiness, through either vampirism or trying to be a better person. And that idea is planted in Owen’s head, it’s believed. But Louis dies, and so does that happy life. And Legs breaks his trust, so why bother with redemption?
“And they say in the end
You’ll get bitter just like them
And they steal your heart away
When the fire goes out you better learn to fake
It’s better to rise the fade away”
OKOK STAY WITH ME this verse is about how Owen’s behavior evolved and grows cruel to be no better than the townsfolk that killed Louis. They hurt him and he sours, he grows violent. And then he proceeds to lie to himself about this fact until he dies. Also works beautifully with bloodletting. Legs gets turned and gets so close to becoming the man he once was, but chooses to give up instead. Lose the leg, yadayadayada.
“Hey, you were right
Named a star for your eyes
Did you freeze did you weep
Turn to gold baby, sleep
Hey, honey mine
I was there all the time”
With all the ways Owen puts Louis/Legs on a pedestal, he never really tried to follow their preachings (albeit, Louis never spoke once, but we can assume he valued kindness, open mindedness, and nonviolence). So when they see each other in the afterlife, heaven or hell, he freezes, cries maybe. But Louis never left. Legs didn’t give up on him until the bitter end.
“And I weep at your feet
And it rains and rains”
Apologizing to Louis does nothing. He’s dragged to hell anyways. (Same w Legs. He can apologies all he wants in hell, but it won’t bring Louis back :) )
Uhhhh hope you’ve enjoyed the rant @venusplantt lmk what you think, I’d love to see your thoughts if you’re willing to share them :3
AU where thralling someone causes them to act as whatever you want most out of them, instead of just whatever you command. And obviously, OBVIOUSLY Scott tells Owen to thrall Legundo, using the lie that it could make turning him easier, when really he just wants to stir the pot.
Owen only really wants Legundo to be Louis.
So after blood is traded, Legs begins to act exactly as Owen remembers Louis. Gentle. Soft. He doesn’t raise his voice. He invites Owen to his house, and they share tea.
Owen’s mind is constantly whirring between i) Legundo found out more about Louis and is doing this to mock me, ii) Louis is possessing Legundo, and iii) Legundo is the living reincarnation of Louis.
But eventually, Owen asks to turn Legundo again. And he says yes, of course, I would love to live eternally with you, my dove. And when he’s turned, the thrall is gone. And he’s just the Doc again.
This would also affect Apo and Martyn. Under the tavern, Martyn would listen to her. Try to understand. After that point, he would be there for her. He’d put more effort into being a better friend. He’d make sure she gets listened to when nobody else in town believes her. Or at least he’d try, all up until the bitter end.
AU where thralling someone causes them to act as whatever you want most out of them, instead of just whatever you command. And obviously, OBVIOUSLY Scott tells Owen to thrall Legundo, using the lie that it could make turning him easier, when really he just wants to stir the pot.
Owen only really wants Legundo to be Louis.
So after blood is traded, Legs begins to act exactly as Owen remembers Louis. Gentle. Soft. He doesn’t raise his voice. He invites Owen to his house, and they share tea.
Owen’s mind is constantly whirring between i) Legundo found out more about Louis and is doing this to mock me, ii) Louis is possessing Legundo, and iii) Legundo is the living reincarnation of Louis.
But eventually, Owen asks to turn Legundo again. And he says yes, of course, I would love to live eternally with you, my dove. And when he’s turned, the thrall is gone. And he’s just the Doc again.
Hot take, but this is not a boundary. A boundary is “If you post pro-shipping messages in my discord, twitch chat, or YouTube comments, or if you tag me on my socials with ship content, you will be instantly blocked.”
“You cannot ship my characters, even if you use the proper tags and do it in exclusively fandom spaces” is not a boundary, it is a threat
I think content creators have gotten very comfortable in fandom spaces. If you don’t want to see something on your feed, block the tags. If you don’t want to read a ship on AO3, block the tag. If you don’t want people to ship your characters where you are expected to be—such as your discord or Twitch chat—you can make that a boundary.
If you can’t handle how fandom-specific spaces are handling creating things, then get out. It’s that simple. Just don’t engage with it. These spaces are not for the creators. These spaces are not for them to police.
ZombieCleo said it best:
💬 21 🔁 680 ❤️ 1376 · How to avoid shipping problems · 1) Make sure shipping fics are appropriately labelled.
2) Ignore things with those
We have been generous and gracious in welcoming you into our spaces, Pyro and Maddie, but it is up to you to handle your mental health. We can’t do it for you. If it’s an issue, block the tags and leave. It is not our jobs to make sure everything you can possibly ever find if you dig enough is good for you. Stop digging.
I hate how harsh this comes off, and I know a lot of people are going to disagree with me, but if you feel confused and upset by this “boundary setting,” then you aren’t wrong to feel this way. You cannot control what other people do, only how you react to it. Block the tags, block the social media pages, ban people from your twitch chat and discord. That’s what you can do as a creator. This is insane overreach, and I’m honestly just so tired of it all.
To v!Owen, vampirism isn’t teeth and claws and unquenchable thirst. It wasn’t just the last parting gift that Louis gave him, his blessing and curse.
It was his grief.
Waking up, alone and confused (Louis had promised he would be there, why wasn’t he?) and the smell of ash on the air. His entire world was destroyed, his promise of a happy forever torn away from him. So what does he do? He utilizes his grief (vampirism!) to grow claws and cut down the people who’ve hurt him so.
So when Legundo comes along, promising a new life, to be cured of his fangs and hunger, he lashes out. Because this gift (it had to be a gift, it had to) was all he had left. So take that grief and give it sharp edges, make it a weapon towards the people who have tried to help you move forward. (He also does this with Shelby. She was scared, and she lied, but he took that and used it to justify his own pain towards getting attached to anyone other than Louis, and pushes her away.)
And when Abolish offers redemption, maybe it was a little tempting. But you couldn’t take his grief away from him, because dear gods, it was all he had. It was better to die grasping onto his own pain than let it go, for to do that would be to let Louis go, and that would never happen.
DIAD, IAIC is going in a littleeee bit of the same direction then previously planned. I’m trying to give Avid less scenes, as I’m a little uncomfortable giving him a larger role with his recent actions.
Scott/Louis hating each other isn't a dynamic I thought I'd love, but here I am.
Yeah, yeah, Louis "fixing" Scott in one way or another is pretty sweet and cool, always a joy to see. BUT what if they're terrible together?
They run the coven as equals and both consider it their family (Scott is a little more accepting of the idea of the coven as a family under Louis's influence than in canon, and Louis is desperately clinging to that new family because he doesn't want to ever be alone again). And while Louis is trying to build some kind of order, to give everyone in the coven their specific roles, to teach everyone to operate together for thriving, Scott is constantly blowing shit up because he likes messing with Louis, likes making him angry. They fight about it constantly and so loudly that the castle walls shake and the fledglings hide in fear.
Oh, they hate each other so much.
They absolutely can't live without each other.
Louis can't bear to lose the family he's just found, and Scott needs someone he can comfortably lean on to regain his powers quickly after his six-hundred-year slumber.
They're good friends (sometimes), both elder vampires who are equals and understand what eternal life is all about.
They're codependent, stuck in toxic relationships, or something like that. They go through cycles of violence and reconciliation after cycles. They constantly compete to be a little more dominant and impose their own order on the coven. They hate each other. They love each other. They're completely crazy about each other.