this is so so embarrassing to ask for but could i get a letter from Santiago (iwtv) for a male reader who he broke the laws of the coven for and turned? (.... i like my men theatric and hypocritical)
**There's no such thing as a non-dramatic vampire, that's the summation of what we've learned in the post business. When you have hundreds of years to perfect your theatrics why not use them, right? Your letter arrives with the posthound, who with an appropriately theatrical bow and a "WOOF!" announces your delivery!**
My dear,
By the time this reaches you, you will have begun to understand what you are becoming. The nights will feel sharper. The sounds of the city will hum like a stage orchestra warming before a performance. Every heartbeat around you will feel like a drum calling from behind the curtain.
Yes… I remember that moment well.
You must know that what I did for you was not a small thing. The laws of the coven are not gentle suggestions. They are old, rigid things, followed with the sort of devotion that borders on superstition. And I—who has enforced them with a smile before an audience—should have known better than anyone.
Yet when I looked at you, I found myself unwilling to let the final act fall.
There are many beautiful things in this world, my darling, but most of them are fleeting. A perfect note sung once. A candle guttering at the end of a play. A mortal life that burns brightly and then is gone.
I could not bear the thought of you vanishing so easily.
So I did something terribly selfish.
I stole you from the ending.
Perhaps the coven would call it a crime. Perhaps they would call it betrayal. But when you opened your eyes again and the dark greeted you like an old friend… I knew I would commit that crime a thousand times over.
You are magnificent already, you know. The way the night curls around you. The way your senses awaken like stage lights one by one. It suits you. Immortality has a sense of drama, and you wear it beautifully.
Still, I imagine you may feel frightened. Confused. Perhaps even angry with me.
That would be understandable.
But I hope—selfishly, perhaps—that in time you will see this not as a theft, but as a gift. A terrible, glittering gift, yes… but one that means you and I now walk the same endless stage.
And I promise you this:
Whatever judgment the coven passes, whatever whispers follow us through the theater halls of eternity… I will not abandon you to face them alone.
After all, mon amour, I broke the rules for you.
It would be terribly dull if I stopped now.
Yours for every darkened evening to come,
Santiago
Tried my hand at a non-3x3 moodboard for my vampire self-insert... I do not think this is one of my talents but it was fun. Although I did make myself melancholy by reading too many web weavings. They're so rarely about joy and love!
Anyways my self-insert always carries a copy of Waiting For Godot (Samuel Beckett) and Power Politics (Margaret Atwood) in their bag, and I think that kind of says everything about them that there is to say.
(the person in the top left photo is me and it was taken in Quebec)
My selfship 'verse combines a bit of books and TV, and it's currently divided into two eras: the top row is the 80s era, which is mostly around me and Gabrielle (also Lestat is in his book rockstar era)
And then the 2020s when I'm hanging out with the tv!verse crew while the interview is happening: I'm waiting for Gabrielle to get back from Europe and she press-ganged Louis into 'babysitting' me (I'm literally sixty-five years old but she knows I need the attention).
I'll have to make a visual web at some point to explain the whole vampire polycule but basically we've got:
Lestat and Gabrielle: mother and son, romantically entangled as vampires in the 1780s, but parted ways when Gabrielle decided to travel in the early 1800s, and Lestat went into vampire sleep for about a century. Met back up in the 1980s, after Gabrielle turns Echo.
Gabrielle and Echo: currently romantically paired, but not exclusive, with Echo hovering somewhere between lover, daughter, and indulged pet. Gabrielle still likes to travel solo sometimes, but finds somewhere to drop Echo for a while. She has neutral-positive ties with a lot of vampires because she travels a lot and doesn't cause trouble like her son
Louis and Armand: lovers since the 1940s, currently exclusive romantically but not otherwise, but both of them have unresolved feelings towards Lestat, their mutual ex, which they are mutually not dealing with.
David Molloy is here with Louis in 2020 to conduct an interview about vampires, but he also has some personal history with both Louis and Armand from the eighties. Armand and Echo are both currently pretending to be human servants to keep an eye on the interview. Neither of them are going to be able to keep up the act for long, because a) Daniel is perceptive and b) both of them are drama queens at heart.
