Credits to the talented @shunika.terry on IG for the haircut idea behind the smokestack twins
The details are off the chain 🔍 her and the rest of the team coogler put together helped make these twins have their own energy and personalities to the T
Remmick is one of the best vampire portrayals of all time...
So anti-racist he was anti-free will... So for equality, he was color blind...
He had such a lonely childlike quality that you can't help but understand him. his true flaw is that he's selfish. he doesn't want a tribe, he wants a cult. He wants their stories, their music, their culture...
He has no concept of racism being an immortal creature; it even disgusts him in the movie. His unwillingness to even realize he's inacting the same supremacist views as the KKK but in a different form. His "Everyone can be happy if we are all in one group" type of thinking is an inherently blindingly unnuanced way of looking at the black people he's trying to turn. In his eyes, being a monster is better than being oppressed. He can't fathom that they want to stay mortal despite how hard it is being black in the south. This is his main pitch to them to turn. As we see in the movie, what made our main character's community so special was that they were different. all from different tracks of life and cultures, they thought differently and acted differently too...
Remmick wants that, but wants it in a way that takes away agency as an individual. He wants equality without the humanity...
immediately after meeting Romeo, Juliet whispers to the nurse, “If he be marrièd / my grave is like to be my wedding bed.” (I.V.148-9)
this echoes later in the play, when she learns Romeo is banished. she takes the cords (presumably to hang herself), and once more tells the nurse, “I’ll to my wedding bed, / and death, not Romeo, take my maidenhead!” (III.II.149-50)
fast-forward. Juliet is begging her mother to delay her marriage to Paris, if even for a few days, “Or, if you do not, make the bridal bed / in that dim monument where Tybalt lies.” (III.V. 212-13)
but where are we getting this motif from? death and weddings? why would a thirteen-year-old girl talk so freely about her own death, and equate it to love and marriage? it’s almost as if her fate is already decided.
because it is. that’s where Lady Capulet comes in. in the same scene as above, Juliet’s mother tells her father, in front of Juliet, “I would the fool [Juliet] were married to her grave.” (III.V.145)
no wonder Juliet is so ready to end her life in all of these scenes throughout the play. how often has her mother told her, in different words, that she wishes Juliet were dead? and how many more times has Juliet’s pain gone unnoticed by the adults in her care?
that’s the beauty of this tragedy. there’s no prophecy. there’s no oracle. there’s no drawing of straws, but each character’s fate has already been sealed before the play even begins. no adult in Verona will offer help to Romeo, Juliet, Benvolio, or Tybalt. they all go practically unnoticed until after their deaths.
even Friar Laurence, privy to Juliet’s pain (“I long to die / if what thou speak’st speak not of remedy,” as she tells him IV.I.68), abandons Juliet in the tomb, with the corpse of her husband, and a dagger, to save himself. all of these children were abandoned. all we have now is their legacy.
synopsis ━ after fleeing 1910s mississippi to escape the drama that surrounded your forbidden love with a woman, you came back home after surviving wars... and other unexpected events.
warnings ━ historical accuracies, swearing/cussing, vampires, blood, canon lore, wlw, some mentions of f@cism and n@zis, internalized homophobia
notes ━ reader is implied to be a woman of color, but anyone can read it. also, i loved this movie sm, maybe my favorite this year since I am a history geek, so I had to write for it
your mother’s dreams for you were simple, very classic for the time.
you had to find yourself a good man, a ring, and six or seven babies to tug at your skirts while you fix dinner supper and all of the sorts in a nice cabin home.
born around 1905, you learned early that those dreams scraped against your skin like wool in summer. who the hell said you wanted that shit?
you never wanted a man, and never wanted the babies unless it was something you were truly ready for.
what you wanted sat across from you in the red-clay schoolyard. all you wanted was for mary’s knees to keep knocking yours under the desk as she laughs low and privately, meant only for you.
through the 1910s you talked secrets with her in the tall grass behind the church, her fingers brushing yours when she passed you a stolen peppermint.
you thought the wanting would kill you, since you thought she’d never want you back in a romantic sense.
before you left school, a fear started to develop as folks talked about devils and about how certain things 'were demonic' in whispers. you were scared, since girls were sent to asylums for less than what you were experiencing.
when your mom started to notice differences in you, you packed one carpetbag the night before your nineteenth birthday and left clarksdale on a freight train rattling north.
you told yourself europe would swallow the ache.
at this time, many people were seeking some sort of refuge in europe to escape the segregated south. the propaganda around europe was extensive, especially among those who came from europe themselves.
after a week long ship ride you landed in nice port. the sea so blue compared to what you were used to in the gulf of mexico and the mississippi river that it hurt to look at it.
soon you drifted to paris where the cafés smelled of burnt sugar and cigarette smoke. over the years you learned to roll your r’s, and to order coffee in a voice that didn’t shake since you weren't being kicked out of bars for simply being "different".
when the great war broke out you were already in lyon sewing uniforms for soldiers who never learned your name, since you told them a fake one.
thankfully the bombs never reached you, but the news did about telegrams, headlines, and the world cracking open around places like russia japan and even in france itself.
still, you stayed.
home felt smaller with every mile you put between you and the mississippi mud.
throughout this time, you wondered how your family was doing back at home. you missed your cousins, smoke stack and sammie. however, you missed mary the most. sometimes, you blocked her out of your mind so you didn't make a bad decision to return to america in the chaos of prohibition and whatever speakeasy shit they had in the cities.
by 1922 you were in rome, sketching fountains in the piazza navona as mussolini’s blackshirts marched past. that night, a stranger in a velvet coat bought you wine and spoke of eternity like it was a train you could still catch.
you laughed, tipsy, and let him walk you through the dark.
the man was beautiful, kind. maybe if he was the opposite gender, you'd fall in love.
unfortunately, he noticed this.
you remember the sting at your throat that night, and the way the stars blurred above as the taste of copper and oranges flooded your body.
when you woke on the cobblestones you were alone, colder than december, hungry in a way food wouldn’t touch.
at least you learned fast to stay out of sunlight, keep moving, and to never linger where questions grow in the heat of political tension.
you moved to germany next.
frankfurt’s banks, berlin’s cabarets. germany had a recent economic boom after much tragedy which caused their population to go into some state of partying.
all germany had was glitter and smoke and girls kissing girls in club bathrooms while the band played louder to cover the sound. you danced until dawn, then slipped into the shadows before the sun could find you.
by 1932, ten years after your turn to the other side... the brown shirts were everywhere, smashing windows, dragging neighbors into the street.
someone recognized your accent, and asked too many questions about papers you didn’t have.
in order to protect yourself from the rise of the nazi party, you took the first boat west... heart hammering like it still could since you were coming back to mississippi.
clarksdale hadn’t changed.
it had the same sagging old porches, and the same dust piles spinning down the road.
you stepped off the bus with a trunk full of parisian dresses and a hunger that had nothing to do with supper. from what you could gather from some people who talked to you since remembering you from so long ago... your cousins, elijah (smoke) and elias (stack) moore, were turning and old sawmill into a juke joint.
you went over to where a stranger said it was, and boards were nailed over windows. you saw sawdust still laying around.
shit, you smelled the pine before you saw the sign.
approaching the building, you saw a figure in a pink dress leaning against the main doorframe.
going closer, your heart nearly fell on the ground.
it was mary.
mary was leaning against the doorframe, arms crossed.
the last eighteen years had softened her waist, but her eyes were the same dark direct and dangerous thing you fell in love with in the first place.
the second she spotted you, her eyes narrowed as if she was looking at a hallucination.
when she realized that it was you, standing in some foreign fashion attire that definite was not appropriate for the current gender roles, she stomped up to you quickly.
you watched as mary moved her hand up to shov your shoulder. it was hard enough to stagger you back a few steps.
“the hell? its been what... twenty years? where the hell have you been, girl?”
mary's voice carried the low pitch in every syllable, but you heard the tremble under it.
“europe,” you said.
the word came out rounder than you meant, as your vowels were stretched by years abroad without being around much americans.
mary squinted, listening to the accent you couldn’t scrub off even if you tried, “you sound fancy. too fancy for clarksdale.”
looking over mary's shoulder, you noticed smoke appearing behind her, wiping sawdust from his hands.
“she’s kin, mary. always welcome.” he jerked his chin toward the door, "its nice to see you again, y/n."
"yeah... long time no see, smoke." you smile, seeing how much he has grown since he murdered his father.. your hated uncle.
“definitely a long time.... but c’mon in before the mosquitoes eat you alive.”
you hesitated on the threshold, with one hell on the plank, one still in the dirt on the ground.
something in your chest tightened... old habit, older instinct you brought with you from europe.
you glanced at mary, “may I come in?”
mary frowned, confused, but smoke laughed.
“girl, you askin’ permission to your own blood’s place?”
you smiled, small as he nodded, which made you cross the line.
however, you hated how the sawdust stuck to your shoes like it remembered you.
inside, the air was loud since blues music played like it would be illegal tomorrow. folks leaned over makeshift tables, passing flasks and stories, and you noticed your cousin sammie playing on a guitar.
mary let you observe before you both found a corner bench. you noticed how your knees touched under the table like they used to in school.
she smelled of magnolia water and the husband you hadn’t met yet.
“well i'm married now,” she starts, twisting the thin gold band on her finger, “mr. charles harrington the third. owns half the cotton between here and vicksburg.”
you waited as your heart in your chest started to burst with dread.
“he’s kind enough,” she went on with her voice flat, “he gives me dresses i don’t want and a house i don’t live in.... but damn I can't lie when I say that every night when i close my eyes all I see is you, y/n. my mind always wondered if you were dead in some trench, or married to a frenchman, or just gone forever.”
the confession coming out of mary was quick, too quick.
you swallowed, throat dry though it shouldn’t be.
“i missed you too,” you said, “but mary, this—” you gestured at the space between your bodies, “—ain’t normal. two women…”
“i know what folks say.” her jaw clenched, “but I don’t care tonight.”
she asked about the wars, the crash, the bread lines snaking through berlin since she read it in newspapers. you told her nice was sunny, and frankfurt quiet, and that you’d missed the worst of it since by now you are convinced that the germans will let that group into power.
you left out the nights you fed in alleyways, the way blood tasted like communion wine, and the way sunlight blistered your skin if you forgot the hour.
you left out rome entirely, as if you never have been there in 1922.
before things started to get crazy, you looked by the front door and noticed that it was getting only more darker outside.
“mary I need air,” you said suddenly, “walk with me?”
she nodded, trusting as ever.
you took her hand, which was oddly warm, and led her out the back door into the pine-scented dark. crickets cried in the distance as you stopped just shortly before a blue car.
mary turned to face you with her eyes soft, “you know, i ain’t stopped loving you since we were kids.”
you stepped closer, close enough to see the pulse at her throat.
“i never stopped either.”
mary leaned in and her lips brushed yours, tentative, then sure. there was no nervousness in your body as you kissed her like you’d practiced in dreams for so many years.
after a minute... you tilted her chin, gentle, and let your teeth find the soft place beneath her ear.
the bite was quick, practiced with two pinpricks before she could fight back. it was a sigh of surprise as her blood flooded your mouth, hot and sweet as stolen honey.
you held her as the venom worked, as her knees buckled, as the night rushed in to claim her for good.
when mary opened her eyes again they glowed faint amber, same as yours had since 1922.
she touched her neck, fingers coming away clean.
“what…?”
“eternity,” you whispered, brushing blood and some wine stain from her cheek, “there will be no more husbands, and no more hiding. just us, forever mary.”
behind you, the sawmill stood dark and waiting, door still open from when you’d asked permission to cross.
mary looked at it, then at you, and smiled... immortal.
“take me home,” she said.
you laced your fingers through hers and stepped into the night, running by the other vampire group who would later terrorize those who were still dancing in the juke joint.
