#❝ there i was‚ a gangster-turned-vampire on the loose ❞「 headcanons 」

[troublewithvampires-a]

Billy Whitebread Headcanons

(picrew link)

his real name is jason booth, but he starts going by billy regularly after the fall of bonesaw vic's. sal's silly little nickname just stuck.

he has tried multiple times to grow a beard, and every time he's given up and shaved it off because he didn't vibe with it.

he's a convicted felon--when he was 19, he was arrested for breaking and entering as well as felony drug possession with intent to distribute.

in modern verses, billy is in his early 50s, though magic supernatural bullshit from his interactions with the fae has increased his natural lifespan dramatically. he isn't sure by how much, though.

he's big into grunge, and his favorite band is nirvana.

his right ear is pierced but his left isn't. no he didn't understand the connotations behind that when he got it. he likes to wear a simple gold earring most of the time.

he has some tattoos, notably a series of sigils on his back to ward off certain supernatural beings, especially ghosts n' shit. salvatore delights in telling him that they're stupid and don't do anything but make him look like a moron.

he also has the name of one of his ex-girlfriends tattooed on his left thigh. she dumped him about a month and a half after he got it. he tells everyone it's actually his mom's name.

it took a lot of time and effort, but he did eventually manage to kick the smoking habit he developed while working at the zoo. he also doesn't drink for the most part anymore, but he does still occasionally smoke weed.

post zoo, billy dresses formally most of the time, but he still keeps a lot of his old band tees and jeans from the early 90s. his most prized article of clothing, though, is a worn leather jacket.

he paints his nails on occasion. his favorite color to make them is purple.

he has some scars, most notably a cut along his jaw and several clawmarks on his back. his shitty sigil tattoos help cover them up.

in modern verses, he absolutely posts thirst traps on instagram. they're surprisingly good. salvatore has an instagram account just to comment on those and make fun of him.

he tends not to use specific labels for himself most of the time, but for all intents and purposes he's a bisexual cis dude.

billy is 5'10.5" but likes to tell people he's the full 5'11".

his hair is naturally brown but he bleaches it regularly.

he has a pet rabbit named clara. she likes to sleep on his pillow.

[troublewithvampires-a]

@bxtsence said: 1 (sexuality asks)

(sexuality asks - open)

what do you label your muse as, and how do they label themselves? is there a difference, and if so, why?

//thank you for asking this one, because this is one i actually was kinda hoping to talk about, haha!

so, i label salvatore as a polyamorous greyromantic bisexual trans man (i did originally list him as pan, but i think bi vibes a bit more with him specifically as a label, but honestly i'm not really gonna get into all of that right now because to me personally the minutiae doesn't matter too much. point is, he's attracted to all genders.)

sal labels himself, however, as nothing. he doesn't use any labels for himself for the most part, and in fact he barely understands what any queer labels actually mean. i think he'd call himself queer eventually after he comes to accept himself a lot more down the line, and he may even finally actually consider himself transsexual, but until then if you ask him he'll probably say, "what are you, a cop?"

and this is a bit twofold for salvatore in my intentions. for one thing, i love writing a queer character who doesn't know *shit*. i was joking with a friend recently that there's a good chance that salvatore, at least for a time, thought he was the first and only trans man to exist. that's how much he doesn't know shit. like characters who know themselves super well are all fine and dandy, but i think it's interesting to have a character who doesn't know how to put words to his experiences.

and my other thought is that salvatore gets to be the reflection of the part of me that's kinda tired of trying to label every part of my queer experience. to be clear, there is *nothing* wrong with having a lot of labels or microlabels or anything like that. at the end of the day, if the label serves you and your experiences, that's what matters.

but like........ i'm kinda tired, y'all. part of me likes to joke about being a label hoarder and that's fun, but i'm also like. i just kinda wanna be Just Some Guy. my gender is both complicated and simple and so is my orientation, and sal can be like that too. for me personally, it's not really that useful to stress about finding the perfect labels to define me. i'm just a guy! i'm here, i'm queer, and i'm just a guy.

guess what i'm trying to say is. oh he's just like me fr.

[troublewithvampires-a]

//it's so endearing to me that salvatore types like a boomer. i need to do more research to portray that properly but idk i think it's really cute. he uses quotation marks for emphasis, he uses a lot of ellipses, he always capitalizes acronyms on the rare occasions he uses them, he gives his emoticons noses on the rare occasions he uses them (ex: :-) )

it's just cute to me

[troublewithvampires-a]

//happy aromantic day!! to celebrate, some thoughts about salvatore and his aromanticism.

so, to start, i don't think sal cares enough to find a specific label underneath the aro spectrum to describe his very specific experiences. he personally doesn't find it useful to worry about having a very specific term for himself, and honestly it might even be a bit of a stretch for him to fully call himself aromantic. functionally, i imagine he's demiromantic, but i don't think he cares to define himself further.

salvatore does experience romantic attraction, but it's *rare* and so nebulous to him that he struggles to identify it on the rare instances he feels it. most of the time, he doesn't go to the trouble of doing so.

and in terms of how he *feels* about romance, that's also complicated! salvatore definitely wants some level of long-term companionship, but i think he likes the *idea* of romance much more than he likes the reality. this isn't to say that he's entirely romance-repulsed, but that romantic relationships are sometimes hard for him. this is due in part to how his previous attempts turned out (especially bruno), but also just. yeah, salvatore isn't usually the type to seek out a romantic relationship. if it happens, great! if not, alright.

all of this is extra complicated due to his attachment issues in general after his isolation. salvatore is... a hot fucking mess.

[troublewithvampires-a]

//oh yeah one last note about sal's mom anna burke. she was very okay with her youngest dressing and acting as a man up until he turned out to actually be one, kickstarting a big theme in salvatore's life where his acceptance as a man hinges mostly upon him being useful.

[troublewithvampires-a]

//ok it is *far* past the point when i should be in bed, but i have some Late Night Salvatore Thoughts to offer y'all

namely, some thoughts about his exes.

(cw: mentions of transphobia, homophobia, and suicide under the cut)

so in my Extended Salvatore Lore, sal has two romantic ex-partners: ginger fitz and bruno martinelli. he had a lot of sex with a lot of people, but those two were the only romances he had pre-vampirism.

ginger was a sex worker sal saw multiple times and ended up forming a lasting friendship with, which over time became romantic in nature. sal and ginger understood each other on a very personal level--they each wanted more out of their lives but were resigned to the lots they had. neither was really given a *choice* in who they'd be.

ginger and sal's romance lasted only a few months before fizzling out, but they remained friends until ginger took her own life in 1975. sal never really forgot her, even if his feelings for her were no longer romantic.

bruno, meanwhile, sal had an on and off romance with from about 1972 to 1986, ending literally the night sal was turned. there are a lot of reasons they were never really open about their relationship, chief among them being sal's own internalized homophobia. it was kept very much on the down-low, and sal never wanted to fully commit out of fear that his acceptance by his peers would be revoked.

making things worse was that bruno actively contributed to sal's anxieties about his gender and sexuality. 'cause bruno 100% interpreted sal's gender as female, and he believed sal was just crossdressing to make it in the mob. a lot of this was benign ignorance on his part, but he definitely got shittier about it as time went on. bruno essentially expected sal to detransition and be his wife, and he grew more and more frustrated the longer it took for that to happen.

i do think sal genuinely loved bruno, but he never admitted it, even to himself. and eventually bruno just... had enough and confronted sal about "the lies he was living". the two had a *nasty* argument that ended with sal breaking bruno's nose and going to get drunk.

and, y'know, it was so nice of victor to come comfort sal that night. good thing he had a friend like vic in his time of need.

[troublewithvampires-a]

//literally no one asked but i wanted to do this <3

anyway i've been thinking for a bit of analyzing the way salvatore is described in bonesaw vic's and how different characters describe him. i don't have a thesis for this.

going under the cut because this got long <3

so the first time salvatore is described in bonesaw vic's is in the first installment, as an off-handed mention while vic is telling billy about himself. i take basically everything here with a grain of salt lmao, because victor describes salvatore's capture as taking place 30 years before when it had to have been ten years before at most.

BUT i do think salvatore's description here, even if it's very limited, is interesting! and i think it ties into how victor views and portrays sal as traitorous and conniving. because sal had the passing thought "huh victor kinda sucks actually" and that's an unforgivable sin.

so this is the only physical description given of sal in this scene:

“Right before my own eyes, this ratty-looking little fuck bounces off the floor and smashes through the window."

now aside from the fact that this is later confirmed to just be... incorrect.... i'm like. huh. interesting.

sal isn't relevant for the rest of this update, though, so we're just gonna move on to the next chapter, which is his first physical appearance.

here's how victor describes sal in this chapter, when warning billy about him:

"You remember my story about the vampire? Yeah? Well, it’s him. Long story short, he’s got a long-standing grudge against me, as you could imagine. He’ll probably tell you some things about me that just aren’t true. Lies and wild distortions of the truth, all of it. Don’t believe a word he says.” "Don’t listen to him and his bullshit. Honestly, I’d go pound a stake through his black, lying heart right now, but I still need the dirty little bastard around."

it's interesting to me that victor emphasizes again and again that sal is a dirty, lying, nasty motherfucker who just wants to take him down. and yeah the obvious explanation for that is that victor wants to hide the fact that he betrayed sal and locked him up here intentionally as a punishment and maintain his image. he's discrediting sal as much as possible so that, on the off chance anyone cared enough to do anything to help him, they might be less inclined to do so.

i originally had a whole analysis typed up here of victor and his motives, but that's not what we're here for! moving on!

next, i wanna share billy's physical descriptions of sal:

The guy sitting on the floor looked to be somewhere in his late thirties, short and thin and pale as milk. His head was shaved to the scalp, and he was clothed in some ragged-looking coveralls. He looked like a prisoner in a forced labor camp.

think it's an interesting contrast between how victor describes him vs how sal actually looks at this point in his imprisonment. because up to this point every creature and entity in the zoo has been shown to be in good condition! fuck yeah! but then sal is explicitly kept like this. and yeah kaz does say that victor hates salvatore and that's why, but yeah! he's the first one up to this point that's treated so spitefully!

also this is the description i point to in my brain for like... yeah definitely salvatore was shaved as part of the humiliation and dehumanization he experienced. because it would be reasonable to assume that he'd shaved his head before that, but yeah this part here makes me think that is Not The Case.

also another thing i wanna call out is salvatore's description of the vampires who turned him. he doesn't describe them much in this chapter, but his description does imply that vampires in this universe are naturally just... kinda emaciated and scary looking, similar to how he is here.

Sal trailed off, sullenly staring at the floor with his bony arms still rigidly crossed over his chest. He whispered, “They came out of the shadows. Dirty, horrible things dressed in rags, crawling down the walls and across the ceiling."

however it's definitely also important to remember that those vampires were kept in pretty shit conditions too lmao. they were trapped in a warehouse with no socialization or access to food aside from what victor brought them. so yeah i think it's fair to say,,, vampires in captivity don't look so good.

anyway the last description of sal that i wanna call out here is from when billy leaves. important to note, sal basically tells him, "never turn your back on me, kid. i'm starving, and you'd make easy prey."

I shuffled backwards to the exit and Sal watched me every step of the way, still smiling his savage smile. I’m not much of a gambler, but I’d bet a million dollars he was thinking about how blissful it would be to rip me open and bathe in my blood. I’d take that bet any day.

salvatore is a fucking freak and i love him so much <3

but yeah i just love the descriptions of sal as like... simultaneously kinda pathetic and sad and very much a victim of horrible circumstances, but also being incredibly dangerous and capable of ripping someone limb from limb if he really wants to. get you a man who can do both <3

anyway i don't have a thesis for this. i don't. but i also wanna include an unrelated exchange between sal and billy. they're so in love here fr-

I opened my mouth, unsure of how I was even going to respond, and I heard myself say, “I’ll kill you when the time is right, but not yet. I might need you.” Sal gave me a sharp glance and slowly asked, “What are you thinking over there, Billy-boy? Tell old Sally what’s on your mind.” I shook my head and muttered, “I don’t know yet. I’m just thinking about stuff, and that’s all for now. Hang in there, Sal. I should go.”

[troublewithvampires-a]

//having some thoughts about sal and billy's relationship!

so sal and billy are close in almost every verse on this blog. like, really close. however, their relationship is only romantic in the road trip verse.

in most verses, i imagine sal and billy have a queerplatonic relationship with a sexual component to it. it's not romantic, it's not friends with benefits, but they do care deeply for each other.

and it *is* an open relationship, even in the road trip verse. sal is pretty comfortable with casual, open relationship sort of deals, but there is a part of him that *does* want billy to be his and his alone. however, billy is *young* and deserves a chance to find someone *human* to spend his life with, not just some bitchy vampire who will far outlive him. besides, sal's biggest concern is vengeance, and until he kills victor, he can't devote his time to a romantic relationship, no matter how much he wants to.

is their relationship particularly healthy? most of the time, no. they care about each other deeply but i think it definitely verges on codependency at time in some verses. sal would kill for billy without hesitation, and even as desperate as he is for vengeance, he's even more desperate to keep his human safe.

idk how much sense any of this makes haha, but here we are!

[troublewithvampires-a]

//something i've thought about for a while but haven't gone into too much publicly is how salvatore's extensive isolation has affected him. especially in how he processes and responds to stimuli.

so sal is like... remarkably well-adjusted for how much time he spent without any stimulation or social interaction. at least, on the surface. when you get down to it, salvatore has SO much fucking psychological damage that he's just forcing himself not to deal with or acknowledge, in large part as an extension of the toxic masculinity thrust upon him from a very young age.

but anyway after his release from the zoo, sal has a lot of trouble adjusting to being around people again. especially large crowds, or even just a group of people talking at the same time. noise very quickly becomes overwhelming, and though he'd never *call* it such, he can be very easily triggered into a panic attack just through being exposed to too much unexpected noise at once.

and part of this is also made worse by his enhanced vampiric senses. blocking out sounds entirely is *exceedingly* difficult for him to do, especially when he's already overwhelmed.

it takes sal a very long time to adjust again to contact with other people, and yeah i write him as being very *very* surprisingly well-adjusted but i do think it takes a while for him to get to that point.

all of this to say i had the thought of salvatore becoming overwhelmed by a crowd of people and disappearing to hide and try to calm down where no one can see him, and then billy finding him. and eventually billy starts carrying around some noise-canceling headphones for these exact situations, so he can help sal calm down. and also just imagining sal wearing the headphones while curled up against billy, comforting himself with the reassurance that the silence *doesn't* mean he's alone again. billy is *real* and *there* and *warm*.

[troublewithvampires-a]

//last pointless ooc post of the day i fucking prommy (for now at least)

but another thought re: motherhood with salvatore as a character.

i don't think salvatore, even when he was potentially capable of bearing children, was ever interested in going that route. for a wide variety of reasons--for one thing, the dysphoria would be hell on fucking earth for him. and for another, his acceptance as a man in the mob was already so tenuous, him choosing to be pregnant would throw away years of hard work in that regard.

however i do think he may have, on some level, liked the idea of being a dad. of course he wrote that off pretty quickly, though, reasoning that any kids he tried to raise would be fucked up beyond belief, and it's kinder not to inflict that on a child. he doesn't know how to be good to people, so it's better not to try.

i talked about bruno a bit previously, but yeah this ties in there as well </3 bruno reallllly didn't understand any of this and tried to encourage sal to detransition and become a wife and a mother, to let bruno take care of him. (i do think bruno did genuinely mean well, which might sound weird to say, but yeah if he actually *understood* then maybe he would've been better.)

bruno believed that they could be happy, healthy, and safe if sal settled down, left the mob behind, and became his wife and the mother of his children. but that was never going to happen.

[troublewithvampires-a]

//stealing a page out of dani's book a bit here, but i'd like to share some headcanons about sal's mom to celebrate mother's day <3 a holiday sal is always more than happy to pretend doesn't exist.

sal's mother was a woman named anna burke (formerly anna o'malley), a third-generation irish-american immigrant whose family had strong mob ties.

her parents expected her to marry a family friend's son and be part of the family business--the family business in this case being organized crime, even if anna wouldn't be working in a very direct capacity.

instead, though, anna eloped with sal's father, westley, a man she'd met while out and about with friends. her family never approved of westley for a variety of reasons, but she hardly cared--he was a way for her to escape from the expectations her family had placed on her. so, the moment she was 18, she and westley got married and ran away together.

anna and westley had four children together in total: jesse (born when anna was 21 and westley was 25), beth (born when anna was 25 and westley was 29), martin (born when anna was 30 and westley was 34), and finally, salvatore (born when anna was 35 and westley was 39).

(salvatore obviously isn't the name he was given at birth, but i'm not gonna mention his deadname in this particular post.)

(putting the rest under the cut b/c this got long)

anna and westley always wanted a big family, and they were happy with the children they were able to have, but anna did struggle quite a bit to actually conceive and suffered frequent miscarriages in her attempts to have children. she was never properly diagnosed, but she did suffer from pcos, which sal would inherit from her.

sal does look a lot more like his mother than he does his father--he has anna's hair texture and eyes, for example, and when he was younger he had the same freckles. his hair color is very much westley's, though.

westley died when salvatore was young, far too young to have much memory of him.

anna tried her best to be a good mother to her children, but the family's financial struggles after westley's death meant that she had to spend much of her time away from home and at work. feeding and caring for four growing children is expensive, after all, and anna's family wasn't exactly willing to help out at this point after she'd turned on them.

eventually, anna figured out a solution. it wasn't one she was particularly excited about, but she reasoned she had no other choice if she wanted to keep them all afloat: her kids had to pull their weight and cover their own expenses as much as possible.

by the time anna had children, child labor had already been outlawed in the united states. but anna was able to secure a few under-the-table jobs for them to help make ends meet. it was still tough, though, and over time, anna came to resent her situation, and at times she even resented her children by extension, though she forced herself not to let that show.

not that she always succeeded. salvatore best remembers his childhood as a time of constantly walking on eggshells where his mother was concerned, because one wrong step could spiral into a screaming match before he knew it.

eventually, though, anna's family reached out to her again. her brother clarence, older than her by quite a few years, came to visit her, and he told her that her family had chosen to forgive her for running away and turning her back on them. not only that, but they would be willing to help her out of the situation she'd found herself in (she chose not to think about how they knew so much).

it took quite a bit of time and discussion, but anna was given a way out of the situation she'd found herself trapped in. if she was willing, clarence could take her youngest, a scrappy and disobedient girl who always looked and acted more like a boy anyhow, and have her run jobs for some of his contacts in local gangs. nothing official just yet, considering the girl's age, but enough to lessen the financial strain on the family.

young salvatore, of course, wasn't given any say in the matter or even really told the full details of what his new position would entail. he was taken out of school and given a new life working for strange men under a new name. all the while, it was made very clear to him that his family was depending on him.

anna wasn't particularly keen on the idea, but eventually she came around. a small, terrible part of her reasoned that, if the worst were to happen, at least she would have one less mouth to feed. and until then, at least the family's financial troubles would be lessened.

[troublewithvampires-a]

//okay here we go, jjba verse thoughts

disclaimer: i've never watched even a single episode of jojo. all of my knowledge comes from friends. also this verse basically only exists to interact with dani's dio LMAO but others are definitely welcome to interact with it as well!!! just uh. don't trust me to know what i'm talking about.

mainly. i wanna talk about sal's stand <3

sal's stand is called DEBT COLLECTOR <3 i haven't drawn it yet, but i do imagine it's humanoid in appearance. the humanoid stands are pretty fun tbh!

Debt Collector's main thing, though, is that it allows him to drain blood from people without having to touch them (though he does have to be able to see them). he can then manipulate this blood and use it however he desires--for example, he can harden it and sharpen it into fucked up little projectiles he can fire at people.

very sexy mental image of sal using his stand to make himself bullets made out of blood that he then fires from his gun (b/c sal is almost always packing heat). is it practical? no. but it's hot <3

however, there is a catch to Debt Collector's ability--he can only drain blood from people who owe him a *debt* of some kind, and he can only drain the equivalent of that debt.

exactly what counts as a debt is one of those *up to interpretation* things, but the point is that sal can't *completely* drain a person and also can't drain complete strangers. he has to have some kind of connection to them, even if it's as simple as him doing a favor for them at one point.

this stand is fun because it's basically just a manifestation of sal's vindictive nature and his "eye for an eye" shit. and also because i think it would make him a worse person <3 because if he wants to use this stand, he has to get people to owe him a debt. which in turn makes him more manipulative as he starts engineering situations so that people owe him *something*, so if he needs to he can use Debt Collector on them.

also in this au, sal absolutely is working with dio if that isn't obvious lol- so he's spicy and fucked up and evil <3 he hates dio's guts but he's a loyal motherfucker so he isn't gonna turn on dio unless dio fucks *him* over big time first.

[troublewithvampires-a]

what creature lies in your soul?

uquiz link: [link]

dragon.

you are a powerful force, not afraid to defend what is your through fire and blood. those around you would be wise to respect the power you wield

[troublewithvampires-a]

soldier, poet, king

quiz link - [link]

picrew link: [link]

The Soldier

"There will come a soldier Who carries a mighty sword He will tear your city down" Righteousness. Strength. Violence. You see a door and break through it. You wonder, sometimes, if anger is the only thing you can feel. Remember : love is passion too. You made your own rules and will follow them to death. You try and forget that there is only one rule, and that it is "FIGHT". You are tired of fighting. You try to forget that, too, and keep going. You dream of quiet. Your love is where you heal. God knows you deserve to. (Really. You deserve to.) Art : Sir Galahad, George Frederic Watts

[troublewithvampires-a]

uquiz: which unpopular archetype are you?

quiz link: [link]

the killer

you got fucked up something awful. sorry. i dont know why or when it got so bad for you, but now that heat feels so true to you that it’s hard to imagine a you without it. there’s nothing grand about the damage you do. it isn’t the kind that people write stories about. for this reason, it’ll be a while before anyone stops you, if they ever come around to it. it’s all the more likely that you’ll have to dig your own way out of this pit. one day you won’t even remember how blood tasted. the rage won’t keep you warm forever, killer! / / personality: intense, introspective, edgy / / counterpart: the dark horse

// stolen shamelessly from @shireentheunburnt

[troublewithvampires-a]

@modestmuses said: Does Salvatore have any phobias? What are they and how intense are they? How have they impacted his life?

//ignore the fact that i'm really behind on answering these character development asks (thank u btw <3), but yes!!! salvatore has one kinda significant phobia, one that might be a bit obvious, all things considered, but still a serious one that fucks him up.

salvatore is claustrophobic.

it's gotten easier for him to cope with it over the years, but small, enclosed spaces are a nightmare scenario for salvatore. i mean, the dude spent almost 10 years total in captivity, specifically in a small, featureless, concrete cell he couldn't escape. that left an impact, and to this day being trapped in a small, enclosed space is the quickest way to send him into a blind panic.

like i said, though, for the most part he's learned to cope with it and it's gotten easier. he tells himself that this phobia isn't a problem for him anymore, and that's not entirely wrong. he isn't often in situations that would trigger it, and he makes an effort to avoid triggering it.

but, well, sometimes it hits. and when it does, salvatore completely shuts down. depending on the circumstances, if he perceives himself as trapped he basically goes into fight or flight mode, and which one he picks depends on exactly what's going on. he does lean more towards fight, though.

what i'm saying is the quickest way to get mauled by this vampire is to make him feel trapped.