#jesse/mael

[tulinokkaelain]

Instead of anything festive, I've been drawing Jesse's ghost girl sightings. xD

"He was holding her, kissing her breasts, yet she was slipping down through a fathomless darkness. Then the girl had come again, the teenaged girl who’d come to her that time in New York when she was so afraid. Only Mael couldn’t see the girl, and of course Jesse knew exactly who she was, Jesse’s mother, Miriam, and that Miriam was afraid."

”It was dark when she opened her eyes. The pain in her head had woken her her up. The digital clock on the dresser said ten thirty. Thirst, terrible thirst, and the glass by the bed was empty. Someone else was in the room.

She turned over on her back. Light through the thin white curtains. Yes, there. A child, a little girl. She was sitting in the chair against the wall.”

[desertfangs]

I've talked before about the similarities between Jesse and Daniel disconnecting from family as they pursue the supernatural, but there are so many other similarities between them and their experiences with vampires.

For example, they both have this moment of realization when looking at a vampire of how inhuman and strange the thing is (and yet they are both very attracted to said creature).

Daniel's realization gets passed around a lot because he compares Armand to an insect:

Daniel stared hard at the creature before him, this thing that looked human and sounded human but was not. There was a horrid shift in his consciousness; he saw this being like a great insect, a monstrous evil predator who had devoured a million human lives. And yet he loved this thing. He loved its smooth white skin, its great dark brown eyes. He loved it not because it looked like a gentle, thoughtful young man, but because it was ghastly and awful and loathsome, and beautiful all at the same time. He loved it the way people love evil, because it thrills them to the core of their souls.

This is right after Armand has come to him in Pompeii and he realizes they've been lovers for a while and Armand isn't going to kill him. He has a moment where the facade drops and he sees Armand for everything he is. (Spoiler, he still wants to hit it.)

Jesse has a similar realization about Mael, whom she does not yet know is a vampire:

Then, an odd realization had seized her. This isn't a human being. This is something pretending to be a human being. It was so clear. But it was also ridiculous! If it wasn't a human being, what the hell was it? It certainly was no ghost or spirit. That was obvious.

This is during a conversation with Mael where they're discussing ghosts and spirits, and Jesse is quite drunk and finds Mael very handsome and attractive. Yet she suddenly realizes that he's not human and has a moment of what the heck?

It's interesting to note that by this point, both Daniel and Jesse have a lot of experience with the supernatural. Daniel has met Louis, of course, and now has spent four years being chase around by Armand, whom he knows is a vampire. Jesse has seen ghosts (both of people and buildings, which is so fascinating!) all her life and is spending the summer in a house with vampires, though she does not know that is what they are.

It's a fascinating example of what mortals see when they really, truly see a vampire. Most mortals simply ignore the strangeness of their movements, the mesmerizing nature of their eyes, the demonic nature they hold. They shrug it off as imagined or a mistake, or the vampire uses mind tricks to convince them it's nothing. But then a mortal really sees a vampire, they absolutely see how utterly inhuman they are.

[bubblegum-blackwood]

How I think the VC characters would feel about the pumpkin spice latte

Lestat: obsessed, can’t get enough, fall girl 100%

Louis: curls his lip up in distaste at the thought

Armand: fascinated by the concept and definitely enjoys it now and again

Daniel: tried it once because Armand begged him, but it’s a liiiiittle too sugary for his taste

Marius: probably likes it more than he cares to admit

Thorne: a fun treat for every once and a while, but not something he would order consistently

Santino: It is evil and indulgent! 😡

Quinn: thinks it’s kinda mid but drinks it for the aesthetic because he’s a dork

Nicki: actively makes fun of people who drink it

Mael: what’s a pumpkin spice latte?

Jesse: prefers it iced 😔

Seth: no hate but he doesn’t prefer it

Fareed: tried it once and that was enough

Khayman: he thinks it’s absolutely delightful

Pandora: prefers the iced pumpkin cream chai

Bianca: thinks it’s super cute and totally gets it as a more-than-occasional treat

Gabrielle: doesn't get the point of flavoured coffee in general

[mademoisellebianx]

"How do you know this?" Jesse had asked, still staring at Mael. Mael was beautiful. The beauty was the sum of the faults-the hawk nose, the too prominent jaw, the leanness of the face with the wild wavy straw-colored hair around it. Even the eyes were too deep-set, yet all the more visible for it. Yes, beautiful - to embrace, to kiss, to invite to bed … In fact, the attraction she'd always felt to him was suddenly overwhelming. Then, an odd realization had seized her. This isn't a human being. This is something pretending to be a human being. It was so clear. But it was also ridiculous! If it wasn't a human being, what the hell was it? It certainly was no ghost or spirit. That was obvious. "I guess we don't know what's real or unreal," she had said without meaning to. "You stare at anything long enough and suddenly it looks monstrous."

— The Queen of the Damned by Anne Rice | Book Three of the Vampire Chronicles

[npdclaraoswald]

Also, Akasha, how are you out here saying 90% of human men must die when out of the vampires you let live, 9 out of 14 are men?

[adamnablelittledevil]

He knows 10 vampires intimately?

WHY DOES HE MEAN??????? YOU D O N O T KNOW THAT MANY VAMPIRES INTIMATELY LMAO

[bandedbulbussnarfblat]

Jesse had seemed a transparent vessel of immense strength when last I saw her. Jesse must have had her own tales to tell now, her own chronicles and adventures.

that's a quote from the memnoch book. when baby me first read this line, she thought it was a hint there would be a jesse book. bc i was young, and still full of hopes and dreams

of course, that never happened. but maybe the show can correct this grievous error and make her a main character in either the talamasca show or iwtv

[monstersinthecosmos]

Gender bend Mael when 🫠

oh my friend please I've already polluted all my group chats with this but it's the woman in the Anoana video IM SOBBING

I think about her a lot, one day I hope I have something I can do with her. 🥰

[jurassic-cunt]

just musing fondly about how insane we will all be when we see khayman trying to make friends with armand and mael (the two unfriendliest vampires alive) at lestat's concert

[faerywhimsy]

TD;DR

No one: …

Me: So I know Lestat's the main character of Prince Lestat, but did any of the other beloved characters see the warning signs of the Voice/Amel in the world before it started going around compelling the old ones into killing younglings.

Sorry, killing young ones. And what might those warning signs have looked like?

Prince Lestat is meant to be read as a sequel to Queen of the Damned and, structurally, its many view points succeeds in that goal. However, thematically, there was so much a missed opportunity in actually seeing many of our favourite characters still existing in the aftermath of maybe as little as a decade still scrambling with the grief and loss and so many abruptly silenced minds...

None of them were... doing well... post-Akasha. But then the tension begins to build again.

Slowly, at first. Disconnected fragments across the continents of the world.

Because it's not like these immortals have ever been the best at communicating directly:—

The Coven and the Courtiers - A Guide (QotD 1.5)

Khayman is with Maharet, never straying too far from the jungles of the Amazon, when he picks up the first murmurings of malcontent from the spirit they moved from Akasha into Mekare. It is not happy within its new host. But perhaps it wasn't happy in its previous host either. Akasha sat as a statue under Marius for centuries before ever waking up. Khayman wonders if they're going to have that long again.

Marius is in Brazil with Daniel. He cannot help himself from scanning nearby minds, even as he claims a hope to remain on the sidelines of their world after the disastrous end of his two millennia caring for the Mother and Father. Marius is therefore one of the first who hears word of a very early and isolated Burning that doesn't seem to have any connection back to Akasha. But it would be foolish to ignore them completely, especially when the last Burnings are still so recent.

Pandora's returned to Arjun in India, but he has begun to act strangely. Because of the veil between their minds, she can only ever understand it through the words he offers for explanation. He wishes for the sanctuary of the earth. Inwardly, Pandora wonders if it was her urge to rush to Marius' aid when he was encased in the ice. She doesn't think it was her alliance with Santino, who is now of course dead to them all. She watches Arjun—before he goes into the ground—because he is the love of her life. She watches him because something deep within tells her something's not right.

Mael was filled with a profound sense of purpose during the first Burning. He would look after Maharet and Jesse. Yet, he had failed in that. Since the Burning, Khayman has taken over as Maharet's consort and companion and that's left Mael with... nothing. His maker Avicus has a new coven in Geneva now, with immortals as old as Gregory and as young as Davis. If Avicus thinks of Mael at all, he has no cause to think it. He's had a very long life but, without any sense of purpose calling him, there is no long any care in him. Not for himself, not for any his kind.

Bianca's in Paris with her new fledgling. They never imagine anything could hurt them. Why would they? The first Burning passed them over without so much as coming near them. There's a rumour passed around Europe lately that bringing one into the blood no longer seems to be happening the way it used to. Tales of mute zombies with hearts that won't beat—truly dead things in the place of fledglings—abound. But even that's easy to ignore when Bianca and her own fledgling feel so young, and in love, and immortal.

David is one of three who were mortal during the last interaction with a Queen of Vampires. He and Jesse talk about it sometimes. Jesse has kept up contact with the Great Family in South America, just as David kept some of his contacts within the Talamasca in Britain, younger ones who didn't mind seem to mind when he became a vampire. The same ones Marius' maker Teskhamen has also given his life into the hands of. They're the ones to bring David's attention to Burnings-related incidents as they start making the news on human television stations. They're the ones to ask him if this is something they should be worried about.

Gabrielle alone is able to say that—when the Queen descended on them the last time—she was the one in risk of losing her only remaining son. She knows many think her cold, but they don't know the pain of burying a child born of their womb. Gabrielle has hardened herself because it's the only protection she's found for her heart and her time in Turkey with the ancient handmaid Sevraine has not her changed utterly. Oh, Gabrielle's not blind, she knows her son will not let this world come to an end. Nor is she—first fledgling of Lestat—unaware of the Voice that whispers to him now.

Killer is in Philadelphia and is only just a century in the blood and one of the youngest outside the "Coven of the Articulate" to have survived Akasha's massacre. Killer makes up part of the Fang Gang, the coven that lies closest to Armand in New York City, less than two hours away. He may only be notable for his proximity to Armand, and his prior connection to Davis, but even he senses the change in Armand as word begins to trickle back to Trinity Gate and the Fang Gang are forced to disband.

Armand knows already he will protect his chosen family at all costs, from any future threats or Burnings. Was there a moment he considered taking them all underground where none would find them should anything resurface? Yes, though he'll never admit it. There was always that concern that the Sacred Core residing in Mekare would corrupt her. Is that what they are starting to see now?

Louis can hear nothing for himself, of course. But Lestat's visits to Trinity Gate begin to grow more and more sporadic and Louis can see Armand grows steadily more tightly wound as the world around them changes again. But still Louis counsels his love and companion to pause. Wait. Be vigilant, but if Khayman and Marius have told them they are already watchful of possible threat, they are likely not the only old ones to do so.

Benji's too much like Armand; he will protect the ones he considers his tribe. He never really understood how the old ones isolate themselves, hasn't really had enough interaction with them to recognise it in any real way. For him, immortals live like they do in Trinity Gate. Benji's radio show begins slowly, like a modern analog of Armand's Théâtre des Vampires, in that no human hearing it will believe, but blood drinkers will find what they need.

I was going to suggest Lestat's probably one of the youngest immortal to actually hear Amel's voice. Then I remembered how strong in the blood Daniel's always been depicted for his age. So yeah he's mad, but that's not helped by the fact Amel started yammering at him from the same point as Lestat. "He rages," said Daniel. "When he's gotten into my head, he's raged."

Cause it's a psychic blast, people. Even Lestat acknowledges, "the Voice is working on a number of fronts".

In any case, all of this is more or less the outline of what I've been thinking of as the QotD 1.5 head canon, something that's being played out in How They Get to Trinity Gate as we get to the pointy end of the fic.

[psalacanthea]

thanks for not leaving me over my Interview with the Vampire madness, btw. I've been waiting a very long time for this, u have no idea.

I will only dedicate one day a week to going crazy over it

[mael-gallia]

"Mael was beautiful.  The beauty was the sum of the faults - the hawk nose, the too prominent jaw, the leanness of the face with the wild wavy straw-colored hair around it.  Even the eyes were too deep-set, yet all the more visible for it."

- Jesse from The Queen of the Damned

[suppenzeit]

rereading my annotations for the vampire chronicles trilogy and im starting to realize that marius definitely wanted to fuck mael with how hes describing him.

[bubblegum-blackwood]

Just for fun

[mademoisellebianx]

If Mael and Jesse don't fuck at least once when we get to Queen of the Damned, I'm suing you, Rolin Jones!

[queenoftheimps]

The concert sequence of Queen of the Damned:

Lestat: WHAT’S UP SAN FRANCISCO CAN I GET A ‘I DESERVE TO BE MURDERED’ UP IN HERE

Khayman and Mael: -circling each other like wary cats-

Jesse: -having the most extreme fangirl moment of her life-

Armand: even though I look like an adolescent I think I might be the only adult here

Daniel: babe have you ever really LOOKED at human skin

Armand: Daniel bb I really need you to get it together ok

Akasha: MURDER MURDER MURDER MURDER

David Talbot and Aaron Lightner: hi we’re here to pick up our daughter?