خونکساریها

All They Saw Were Maggots

THE PENTHOUSE IRC is back at it again with a new collection/writing challenge, wherein every day in April there's a new rape/non-con themed prompt. I'm posting daily drabbles here and on AO3, with longer fics posting irregularly throughout the month, my capacity to keep up with them permitting! Check out my maggots, and the rest of the collection! The server is currently closed to new members, but we always welcome new friends joining us in our events, so check out the prompts if you're interested.

Lost Quattrocentro Masterpiece Unearthed!

THOUGHT LOST IN the palazzo fire that spelled the demise of Renaissance artist Marius de Romanus, a student's copy of his famed painting The Temptation of Amadeo was recently discovered in a cache of artwork in a villa in Crete.

Signed by none other than Riccardo Maliani, who was a student of de Romanus in his youth, and ultimately significantly more successful than his former master, the painting depicts the titular Amadeo (a slave and favourite model of many Venetian masters) surrounded by eclectic religious imagery, including a trio of uncanny, black-winged angels. See the painting in full here or on AO3.

Some Random Updates

THERE'S A LINKS page now to make some parts of this little blog more easily navigable! You can find it here or at the top of this page in the right subheading. It contains links to my fic, the transcripts I've been posting here, and several other resources and links that have otherwise only been shared in the Loumand discord server! I will try my best to keep it updated along with the main page!

Finally, Prop Text That Doesn't Suck!

SO A FEW weeks ago a bunch of materials from seasons 1 and 2 (paintings, props, etc) went on auction, and now we're starting to get pictures of them from the winners. Among these was the 34-page script for the trial, and it's shockingly well made. Hand typed, clearly, typos included, and the entire thing makes sense, nothing came out of an AI, it's not lorem ipsum... I'm impressed, honestly. There's also over a thousand words of new content in here, and if we can take the quality to suggest it might actually be canon, Lestat is looking particularly guilty right about now... I've transcribed the whole thing here, with the major block which in the show we skim over with some modern-day dialogue from Louis and Armand in red, so it's easier to tell what's new. Enjoy!

So, Uh, About Talamasca

REMEMBER WHEN I said I was probably going to write detailed reviews of the relevant lore in Talamasca: The Secret Order? Well, the first episode came out, and I watched it, and there was a little bit of interesting stuff going on, but not enough to write a post about. So I told myself, I'll wait and do episodes 1&2 together. And then episode 2 came out. And then the rest of the series came out. And I'm going to be real with you, there's not much going on here of interest.

We see two pages of Daniel's book (transcribed for your reading displeasure here) and confirmed that it was published by Roman-Weiss (Marius de Romanus and Bianca Solderini?)...

...learn that the Talamasca Amsterdam Motherhouse's library and archives, which may have housed all of the Talamasca's information about vampires and vampirism (they make a very big deal of the loss), was burned down in 1972, interestingly a year before Daniel Molloy met Louis. Everything contained within was lost. This included a manuscript of Marius de Romanus' memoirs including quotes from Blood & Gold, which has some interesting implications about the timeline and his intentions in telling his story.

In TVC, Blood & Gold comes comparatively late, and can be read in some ways as a rebuttal of Armand's memoir. Here, it must have been written very shortly after Armand's human lifetime, or even during, and despite the printing press being an available technology, and one we know vampires to use for books shared amongst themselves, it's hand-written and illuminated, potentially by Marius himself. The hand might suggest as such: it seems to me an odd combination of uncial (a majuscule scribal hand used from around 300–900 CE for Latin texts) and Italian blackletter, called rotunda (used beginning around the 1250s). There are also Lombardic capitals, which is another late medieval affectation.

Marius is not mentioned by name anywhere in the series, and apart from a very brief appearance by Molloy, and another by Raglan James, there is no crossover between characters either appearing or named—but in external interviews, we're told that the vampire Jasper's maker is someone we already know: probably Bruce/Killer, since he was turned at some point after the 1920s, probably in Texas. As a human child, Jasper was raised in a vampire coven in La Paz, Bolivia that was exterminated by the Talamasca. Its master was an ancient who was allegedly kicked out of his medieval Romanian coven for refusing to drink human blood.

We do get a bit of coven lore in some grainy screenshots of a book written by vampires, for vampires:

This book is not intended for the reckless fledgling or the overconfident elder who believes there is nothing left to learn. It is for those who seek to refine their understanding of the lifeblood they depend upon, to deepen their connection to their prey, and to explore the boundaries of their own restraint. Within these pages, you will learn the subtleties of the blade, the sacred tools of our trade, and the methods by which blood may be harvested with respect—or dominance. Techniques vary by lineage, geography, and the personal philosophies of the vampire, and this text will explore them all, from the artful incisions of the Hematist sect to the ceremonial rites of the Sangreal order.

This book was also not intended for the viewer, because it mostly copy/pastes the same couple nonsense paragraphs about the Mind Gift and the top five spots to bite a mortal. (Ankles are on the list: A subtle and discreet choice, with a steady but slower flow. Position the blade behind the ankle, targeting the artery. This site is ideal for a less invasive and less conspicuous feeding.)

Real Rashid may also have been put on his assignment by the Amsterdam Motherhouse, or at least it's Talamasca staff there who edited Interview with the Vampire, and also wrote in/potentially invented certain sections, including p.227. "Take it up with Amsterdam," Molloy complains. The London Motherhouse has been taken over by vampires at the time of Talamasca season one, so it's possible all of the original surviving London staff who did not turn transferred over to Amsterdam whenever that happened. Certainly Amsterdam's archives weren't a useful resource, thanks to the 1972 fire and the 7-5-2 being busy grooming a little girl. But don't worry about that.

One does wonder what information they were able to re-gather in the fifty years between the fire and the second interview in 2022, and how. What year was the vampire Sam scouted? Was Real Rashid placed in the Dubai Penthouse to secretly digitize the du Lac archives? Louis and Armand may have significantly better records than the Talamasca, at least in regards to the Theatre des Vampires, Children of Darkness, and Marius de Romanus.

The final useful information we get from the series is the Talamasca's penchant for acquiring "special" children through methods of varying morality and raising them in cultish group homes where they are indoctrinated and experimented upon. Real Rashid's childhood is looking dubious.

Anyway, that's pretty much it! If I've forgotten anything important, or misremembered something, feel free to reach out. I hope any of this is useful to those of you who don't want to subject yourself to this show. It wasn't good.

Necrophage

THE S02E08 CODA you never wanted.

Armand’s gaze flicks down to Daniel’s crotch, hardening cock beginning to tent his trousers. Looks up again, and says, “Remarkably responsive for your age,” with a withering condescension. “Or did you ‘pop a pill’?”

Complete, 5200 words, rated Explicit. Horror. Read it here or on AO3.

Blood & Gold & Trashy Procedurals

SO THE NEW teaser AMC+ posted on twitter for Talamasca: The Secret Order, which comes out next month and unfortunately looks exactly like some shit I'd be into, has a very brief clip of an illuminated manuscript burning.

Amadeo, in hi[s] ... see beauty as ... [P]andora, in a ne[w] ... celestial form ... Hea[v] ...

This is adapted from Blood & Gold, the Marius autobiography, from the section where Marius purchases Armand. It was a cruel small chamber in which they'd locked him, and into that chamber the light of a lamp flooded upon the child. And there I saw beauty, beauty which has always been my downfall, beauty as in Pandora, as in Avicus, as in Zenobia, as in Bianca, beauty in a new and celestial form. Heaven had cast down upon this stone floor an abandoned angel, of auburn curls and perfectly formed limbs, of fair and mysterious face... "Amadeo," I said, the name springing to my lips as though the angels willed it, the very angels whom he resembled in his purity and in his seeming innocence, starved as he was.

So. You know. There's that. Look forward to my extensive reviews of every single episode of Talamasca, I guess!

Some Thoughts on Faith

I AM PROBABLY never going to write a Hindu Arun. It's a perfectly valid headcanon—it's very possibly the intended reading, and only time will tell—and it's a certain kind of heartbreaking to imagine that the greatest comfort in his life was, at one point, forced upon him, but regardless of the faith involved, I almost always write my devout characters with a relationship to God ﷻ that's similar to my own—what else is fanfiction for but occasionally holding up a mirror to your soul?—and I was always very, very self assured and arguing with my parents on points of interpretation from a young age and I don't think I want to be writing a kid born into a Hindu family but knowing in his heart the love of God ﷻ and not learning how to put words to what he knew was right until he's...sold into slavery. Feels pretty bad, actually. I don't want to feel like I'm writing overt anti-Hindu commentary? Just on the optics level, if nothing else.

And while I don't mind writing overt anti-Catholic commentary in quite the same way, I'm not really interested in exploring Armand's disrupted sense of identity in a specifically religious lens, either. Again, it's a perfectly valid headcanon! It's very likely the writers' room's intent! But I'm much more interested in having faith as this one singular throughline, the single most important relationship in his life, something that everyone has tried to wrest from him but never actually succeeded.

Anyway, I've said it before and I'll say it again: Marimand hajj pilgrimage very shortly before Amadeo's turning, intended as closure and farewell to his mortal preoccupations, as the adaptation of Marius taking Andrei to Kyiv to meet his parents one last time. And yes, still dragging a fledgling Amadeo from coffin and whipping him over having the audacity to continue having these feelings and this connection to anyone that is not Marius himself. You serve a god. You are happy to serve.

Fight, Flight, Freeze

FOR THE ONE year anniversary of the Penthouse Discord server, this bright young reporter with a point of view teamed up with a few other very talented server members and wrote Marimand. Because of course she did. What else did you expect?

“Amadeo,” said Riccardo, and reached for his shoulder. Amadeo recoiled from him as if struck. “Amadeo,” Riccardo repeated, “يا أخي ما الخطب؟ ya akhi, ma al-khatb?”

Complete, 21 000 words, rated Explicit. Horror. Read it on AO3 in full, or my section as a standalone here.

One By One, We Drop Like Flies

LAST UPDATED 02.08.2025 (sorry it's been so long!), this Venice-era fanfiction was written for yurisaurus as part of the B-Sides Server Exchange, and combines book and show canons to largely very upsetting effect.

There is a boy in a room. There is a man in red. There is a boy in a room.

WIP, 6 000 words, rated Explicit. Angst. You can read the first two chapters here or on AO3.

FIC REC: Miasma Theory

THIS FIC BY platoapproved is a sequel to A Slow Confusion, another absolutely gorgeous, novel-length fanwork which weaves the Vampire Chronicles characters Jesse Reeves and Maharet into a post-s02e08 AU where the Vampire Armand is in a relationship with Real Rashid and Daniel Molloy was never the Devil's Minion.

Set a while after ASC, Miasma Theory follows Jesse and Armand home to their new flat in Edinburgh, where Armand is forced by circumstance to open up about a trauma that, long buried, remains hideously fresh, and the trio grows just that much closer.

“You have, like, five hundred medical textbooks and you haven’t watched Grey’s Anatomy?”

Complete, 20 000 words, rated Mature. Hurt/Comfort. Read it on AO3.

Marius de Romanus Casting "Could Be Way Worse", Reports Graiai

I WAS OF course hoping AMC would cast an African actor as Marius, highlighting the ways in which his relationship with Amadeo is a continuation of a cycle which began with his own birth into slavery, the ahistorical treatment of race in ancient Rome in television which caters to a white supremacist fiction, and allows the already utterly rancid Marimand dynamic to stay at about a similar level of foul to the book canon, where (when they're both white—Armand Ukranian and Marius Gaulish or French respectively) Marius is already kind of impressively racist towards Amadeo. I worry that by making Marius white in showverse, we'll have such a cartoonishly vile Marius that it becomes almost unbelieveable that Armand, a man who is canonically familiar with decolonialist and anti-racist philosophy and activism, would be able to hold his beliefs and any self-delusion about his relationship with his maker in the same breath. But then, let's not assume the worst.

If they had to pick a white guy, I kind of love that it's Christopher Heyerdahl, a.k.a. Todd the Wraith from Stargate: Atlantis, the demon Alastair from Supernatural, and that one evil vampire from the Twilight movie. I don't know his name, sorry. There's already non-con fanfiction about one of his characters on my AO3, and anyway I think he's very attractive. Amadeo, I understand you.

Part of me hopes they'll give us a modern day Marius who looks sort of like how Heyerdahl seems to dress day-to-day...this harmless, artsy suburban dad sort. I want a charming and friendly Marius, believeable as the subject of Armand and Lestat's hero-worship, rather than a cackling, Alastair-esque villain.

Another part of me hopes that, since we seem to be getting a long blonde haired Gabrielle de Lioncourt whose sexual abuse of her son is more overt than in the books, we'll have Armand seeing similarities not so much between Marius and Lestat and falling in love with Lestat for it, but seeing similarities between Marius and Gabrielle, hating her and unpacking his complicated feelings towards his maker because he hates her. We shall see!

Here Come Loose the Hounds

WRITTEN FOR SOMEONE_ELSE in the Penthouse Valentine's Day Exchange, this is a canon divergence AU where Claudia leaves for Europe alone. Features Lestat bashing, castration, and just a hint of vampire fiqh.

It wasn’t love at first sight, not even close. Claudia knew Armand thought she was pretty, and, well—she had eyes, she wasn’t going to pretend she didn’t think he was.

Complete, 6 000 words, rated Explicit. Genre agnostic. Read it here or on AO3.

FIC REC: Accent Color

KATPLANET IS PROBABLY one of the coolest people I know in fandom. Also creating the incredible multimedia extravaganza Bloodstuck and famously great at writing about vampires doing healthy communication and it somehow not seeming hideously out-of-character, they set their skills to an adorable Devil's Minion halal romance for yours truly for the Penthouse Valentines' Day Exchange.

Please read it, it's perfect, you won't regret it. Lestat is there. Kat DM'd me while writing it to ask if muffing was halal.

Complete, 22 000 words, rated Explicit. Romance. Read it on AO3.

T'es mon soleil

CLAUDELEINE WRITTEN FOR Fic in a Box 2024 for word_docs_and_willowboughs. Complete, 1 500 words, rated Mature. Romance. Read it here or on AO3.

In Delusions of Increasing Grandeur

EXPERIMENTAL MULTIMEDIA METAFICTION blending real historical context with in-universe art, essay, RPF shipping, and way too much CSS. If you've read anything of mine already, it's probably this fic.

...if I were a Pulitzer-winning investigative reporter and found out where Christ in the Storm on the Sea of Galilee was, I would not spend two paragraphs on it and then go back to claiming the owner was a vampire. I would be cashing a ten million dollar check and then writing a book about the Gardner heist.

This fic is not the most complicated fannish project I've ever undertaken, but it's up there. I had a lot of fun with it, and I hope you do too.

Complete, 14 000 words, rated Mature. Gen. Read it here or on AO3.

FIC REC: Let the Rock Roll

THIS DEVIL'S MINION role reversal romance set in Toronto (written by volkswagonblues) has a very hard sell summary, but no joke, it's one of the most compelling fics I've ever read. Let the tale seduce you, okay? Armand butchers a guy in his bathroom while human, if that will help convince you any.

She’s indignant. You’re supposed to say au revoir, Arun, that means see you later in French.

Oh my gosh, it’s like you don’t listen to yourself sometimes.

Adieu is for people you never see again.

Complete, 68 000 words, rated Mature. Angst. Read it on AO3.

I Can Be Anything, Anything, Anything

WRITTEN FOR UNRAVELLEDCLEMENTINES as part of Kids Come First 2024, this is half Loumand, half Marimand, all vaguely depressing castration porn. If that sounds like a good time, you're in great company.

How does a castrated dervish become the favorite muse of half the Venetian School become maître of a coven of Franks?

Complete, 2 000 words, rated Explicit. Angst. Read it here or on AO3.