#iruhe

[ludwiginsexyuniforms]

Happy New Year Iruhe!! I hope you like Vamps at least a little :) It’s heavy influenced by the game Vampire the Masquerade: Bloodlines. I changed the embrace process a bit tho. I couldn’t help it , it had to be vampires again. Wish you all guys a happy new year!!

[dailygermancest]

"Ludwig has a competence kink."

@iruhe

Referring to Ludwig thinking about Gilbert, his new (more competent) personal assistant.

[dailygermancest]

grape & blackberry

Grape: if you could take a vacation anywhere in the world, where would you go?

Mmm it’s gonna have to be between three places: Germany, Japan or Yosemite National Park! I’ve always wanted to visit the palace at Sanssouci and visit the Black Forest in Germany, while Japan would be great to visit the hot springs and check out Osaka. And Yosemite because I’ve gone there so many times in the past (at one point, my parents took my brother and I every summer for 5-8 years) and it’s just a peaceful place to be. I know it like the back of my hand.

Blackberry:  is your life an action film, a comedy, a romantic comedy, or drama?

Uhhhhh definitely all of them at different stages of my life. At night, an action film (I’ve gotten into some trouble before whoops), in high school, a romantic comedy (I was in a fucking love triangle) and at present, a drama for all the shit the past year. But this year, my crops are flourishing.

[misskiwi]

iruhe replied to your post “someone my mum works with went to japan and she brought back these...”

Ooh, I've had those before. They're pretty great. :9

they’re delicious! and super cute too!!

[ramblings-from-elsinore]

Ooh the plot thickens. This chapter was great! Gosh, I'm itching to know Gilbert's secrets -- who exactly he is, the connection between him and Ludwig's brother, and what his original errand was. The film snippet creeped me out so kudos on that, lol. Looking forward to the rest of it!

Thank you!! Hehe glad you liked it *rubs hands together like evil mastermind* All will be revealed soon... Hope it lives up to expectations ;)  Oh, and I’m happy the film clip managed to creep you out.  Mission accomplished xD

[ramblings-from-elsinore]

1, 4 & 5 for The Last Days of the Beilschmidts, if it hasn't been done already. I know it's still in the works, so if any of the answers are going to be spoilery then do feel free to skip. :)

Thanks so much for the questions, and sorry for the delayed answer!  I had to give this quite a bit of thought.

1: What inspired you to write the fic this way?

Oo, great choice for this fic!  Because let me tell you, at first I was pulling my hair out trying to figure out how the hell I was gonna write this one.  I had been looking at conventions for gothic novels like Frankenstein, Carmilla (lesbian vampires ftw), and Dracula, and really wanted to use their style of first person recounting.  So the idea of journal entries came in early.  However, I knew that, for spoilery reasons I won’t go into just now, I couldn’t rely on journal entries for the entire fic, so I began thinking about ways to supplement that.  I also remembered reading about how Bram Stoker used different written sources for Dracula, like newspaper clippings, and that he used new technologies of the era in his narrative, like film (don’t hold me to this, I haven’t actually read Dracula, just about it).  I also saw Crimson Peak around that time and liked how audio recordings ended up playing a key part in uncovering the central mystery of that story.  I wasn’t sure what era I wanted to set the fic in, but the technology is what led me to the 1930s ultimately.  I wanted to use transcripts of audio recordings, because I liked the idea of just sharing the audible with the reader but leaving them without eyes, so to speak.  Then I thought, why not the other way around as well?  It’s a bit trickier to transcribe film, but silent film works similarly--you only see what is visible in the frame, and you have no audial information.  I thought for a horror fic this would be a great opportunity to play around with how much you give the reader and how much you withhold--often it’s what you don’t know, what you’re just left to imagine, that’s the scariest.

Then just to fill in the cracks I came up with the framing narrative, with Elizaveta able to provide extra details and the “outsider perspective”, and then one more layer of framing through the anthropologist, who provides the justification for putting the whole thing together for the reader.  I also liked the idea of hearkening back to the antiquated trope where the scientist or explorer is the one who stumbles on some fascinating discovery and ends up writing the account for others back home to read (like in Frankenstein).

4: What’s your favorite line of dialogue?

Oh, it’s so hard to choose just one!  Not because they’re all great or anything, but because I feel like they work in chunks--there aren’t really many great stand-alone quotes.  Except when they’re quoting Goethe lol.  But if I have to choose just one it would be Gilbert’s line:

“I think she's speaking about a sort of life after death. The shadow-life of the spirit. Secluded from the world, free to explore the mysteries of the heart and to share them with one dearly beloved… to discover what wanders in the night.”

It’s not especially beautiful language or anything, but it does touch on pretty much all the central themes of the story, both the obvious and the not-so obvious, and should be especially resonant when taken into consideration with how the story will end.  That’s all I’ll say for now ;)

Though I have to give one special mention: the exchange about Mephistopheles, when Gilbert recites the quote from Faust, and Ludwig reacts like the fanboy he is.  I find it sort of funny because the tone is a little eerie and threatening (when is Gilbert not those things in this fic) but Ludwig is so toootally oblivious.  Sweet, naïve boy.

5: What part was hardest to write?

Probably the film transcripts.  It’s just more difficult than the audio transcripts because there aren’t any words to transcribe; it’s trying to translate the purely visual into the purely verbal as objectively as possible, but of course there is interpretation involved nevertheless.  Ironically, it’s the writing that is supposed to be the most straightforward and factual that is the most difficult to get right!

[ramblings-from-elsinore]

Gilbert as Mephistopheles was great. I also loved all of his subtle propositions of forever. They were so darkly seductive, spoken like a tempter indeed. Looking forward to the unravelling of all these little mysteries! The line 'I live in you' is kind of nagging at me though.

Thank you so much!! I’m so glad it’s having the intended effect ^^ All will become clear... soon... ;D

[ramblings-from-elsinore]

I was hoping you'd write about the function and we got that and more! \o/ Now I'll be dying to know what happened the morning after, lol. I've actually been thinking about possible Stockholm syndrome on Weill's part because his situation practically screams it, but (whether or not my view is correct) that term calls to mind some sort of poor, deceived, psychologically manipulated victim and I don't get that vibe from him so it's true love ... IDK, I'm rambling, sorry. XD

Please ramble all you want :D it’s intriguing to hear your thoughts. And I’m not sure myself exactly where this is going, so we’ll see… You might be right about “true love,” who knows! ;)