#and yet. and yet. its just soo good and compelling and makes me feel soooooooo normal to think about

[maggotmoment]

You know there’s a line in ep 1 of the sickening during shilo’s intro that’s something like ‘i don’t know how those two get along, he’s a monster’ that’s from one of the guards to another guard abt shilo and Lazarus that I always took as meaning that Lazarus is seen as a monster but. The other interpretation is very interesting to think abt! Another guard later pretty much begs shilo not to talk to him bc otherwise he’d be ‘marked for death’ and how no one who talks to shilo lasts longer than a day and I’m just like.

Do you think the guards warn each other. Do they say not to talk to the prince, no matter how sweet and innocent it seems, because doing so will doom you? The guards have to have some kind of community, some kind of camaraderie. Enough to earn each other on how to not get killed, at the very least. But the first guard shilo gets killed is new and hasn’t talked to the other guard very much. The second guard is less willing to talk to shilo but he ends up doing so, of course he does. And the third one at that point fully believes his actions are of his own free will.

I think what part of makes shilo so compelling to me is how he is in no way malicious with his actions. He doesn’t want to kill these guards or get these guards killed, he isn’t doing it out of hatred or enjoyment or even boredom. He just. Does not see them as anything more then things to talk to sometimes and use in his escape attempts. They get replaced quick enough. But from an outside perspective? Of course he’d seem monstrous. Even amongst a whole castle full of monsters, a young, mysterious prince who has never been outside the castle walls, who is rumored to doom anyone he talks to, all while seeming so sweet and innocent, so out of the norm in vampire society? A prince who can easily manipulate your actions and thoughts and will do so without a second thought not because he is intending to use you but because he genuinely doesn’t see anything wrong with it?

Of course that seems like a monster. Of course you’d wonder how others could bear to talk to him when it could so easily doom them. Mark them for death. like-a day? they barely even last a day.