#there ain't language for the things i've seen vs there ain't language for the things I feel

[wakingstarstuff]

meet me in the woods is still undefeated imo

[murfpersonalblog]

IWTV Musings: LDPDL & the Black Mayfairs: Oncle Vervain & Merrick

On the heels of both seasons of Castlevania Nocturne, I'm even more sad/mad that Oncle Vervain Mayfair was cut from AMC!IWTV & that we lost some of Louis' connection to his Haitian Creole culture. I've discussed Oncle Vervain before (x x x), but no one EVER talks about him, and it's such a shame & missed opportunity on S1's part.

AMC!Vervain vs Lestat, "Nawlins Voodoo meet European Voodoo"

We got several scenes of Oncle Vervain in Rolin Jones pilot script:

Vervain warns Louis that Papa Legba, the protective Voodoo loa of the crossroads, had forsaken NOLA--the very same night Lestat arrived in Storyville. The morning before Louis goes to Tom Anderson's poker game (when Lestat freezes time), he visits Oncle Vervain for a good luck spell (gris gris).

Paul, ofc, disapproves of Louis dabbling with Oncle Vervain (cuz Catholics think everything not in the Bible is from frikkin Satan 🙄), but Louis tells him to stfu.

Next time we see Oncle Vervain is the night of the DPDL dinner, when Lestat & Louis are chatting outside 1132, before Miss Lily appears on the balcony in her underwear.

Oncle Vervain IMMEDIATELY clocks that ish ain't right with Lestat as soon as he looks in Lestat's unnatural vampire eyes. He knows Lestat's a bloodless vampire, and starts praying to Papa Legba for protection; but Louis' a sweet baby idiot who just assumes that Lestat does "European Voodoo," and asks Oncle Vervain in Haitian Creole to be nice to his "friend." But Oncle Vervain ain't stupid, and is like hayul naw, and keep your tainted money, too!

Jacob Anderson is SO good with languages, so I'd've LOVED to see Black!Louis speak Haitian Creole, we were robbed and NO I won't STFU about it, Rolin, you OWE ME! 😩

There's also Louis' relationship with other religions. Cuz Haitian Voodoo shaped his life too; he DOES believe in magic, and the power of the gods/spirits/ancestors, and there's a REASON Lestat's weirdness doesn't faze him as much as it SHOULD. Cuz Voodoo & Catholicism go hand-in-hand, but most people never know that; they assume voodoo practitioners are just godless satanists; when no, Voodoo is deeply Catholic.

Plus, there's this thing very common in vampire lore. The victim of The Vampire is usually abnormally sensitive or aware of the occult beforehand in some way--from 2024!Ellen Hutter's epileptic fits being associated with the fae/changelings; to 1992!Mina Harker being a reincarnated dead woman who has dreams/visions/memories of her past life as Dracula's bride; to book!Lestat being the 7th son who goes to the Witches Place and sometimes sees spirits; and ofc AMC!Louis in the pilot script relying on Voodoo magic from Oncle Vervain, and mistaking Lestat as a European Voodoo master.

So I just wish we'd seen Oncle Vervain in living colour, with him & Lou interacting; and esp. Oncle Vervain & Lestat squaring off, I'd've died laughing, cuz Oncle Vervain was NOT playing games with him! 😅

Oncle Vervain & AMC!LDPDL: Twinsies

Funny enough, Oncle Vervain resembles vampire!Louis: A young mixed race Creole with "frightening" light eyes just like Merrick's (which the books say are green).

AMC keeps creaming themselves over Rowan Mayfair's actress' light eyes, but Vervain & Merrick had eerie eyes, too!

It would've been so cool to see brown-eyed!Louis as a human interact with a green/hazel-eyed Oncle Vervain, who could see spirits and knew all about the things that go bump in the night--Lestat included. Then Louis' made a vampire, and HE looks like Oncle Vervain, but a more twisted unnatural version of him. They're BOTH on the other side of the veil now, the same mystic veil that Louis had always been drawn to, even when no one else in his family approved. But Louis' one of the lougarou that Oncle Vervain AVOIDS. Louis has the WRONG type of magic now--the wrong type of green eyes from Oncle Vervain.

Alas, so many missed opportunities, Rolin. 😔

book!Vervain, and the Black Mayfairs

Like, Oncle Vervain's backstory in Merrick is WILD.

Oncle Vervain Mayfair was SCARY--not scary cuz he's evil or anything (the way Oncle Julien/Lasher scared everyone); but scary in that he's POWERFUL, which was RARE in male Mayfairs. Julien (b. 1828) & Vervain (c. very late 1800s/very early 1900s) were the goats.

The Mayfairs are all descended from Petyr van Abel, a psychic in the Talamasca, who impregnated Deborah Mayfair (and then impregnated their daughter Charlotte Mayfair), the daughter of Suzanne Mayfair, the first witch to ever summon Lasher. The Mayfairs inherited Petyr's psychic powers & Suzanne's extra chromosome (Taltos DNA); some Mayfairs having more or less, depending on their particular line's level of incest & inbreeding. Male Mayfairs could be strong psychics, but none of them were ever Lasher's Witch, except Julien Mayfair.

The Black Mayfairs learned a lot from Oncle Julien, but they had nothing to do with Lasher (a white supremacist eugenicist who'd actually remove the melanin from the Black slaves he possessed, so they could look Caucasian & more like him. 🤦). Julien Mayfair slept with A LOT of people, including Black women he impregnated with more Mayfair witches. Some were high yellow enough to pass as white & mix with the White Mayfairs, but the darker-skinned Creoles who couldn't pass (Merrick's line) were left on the margins--which was actually a good thing, since it kept Lasher FAR away from them, bless. But Oncle Julien would still swap magic with them (amongst other things....), and apparently he had a much more amicable relationship with the Black Mayfairs than any of the White Mayfairs; the way they talk about him is radically different from how the White Mayfairs did, which AMC obvs kept as canon--

--and the way the Black Mayfairs talked about Julien's radically different from how they talked about the rest of the White Mayfairs, too; whom they often saw as nosey busybodies & interlopers, and as racist hypocrites too ashamed to acknowledge the descendants of their Black slaves, lovers & mistresses.

(AMC removed all the racial/racist aspects of the Mayfairs & Taltos, a change I already said I hate, but wtvr.)

Angelique's genealogy's vague AF. For Julien to have been her nephew by blood, that means she has to have been a Black by-blow of either Julien's grandfather Henri Marie Landry (d. 1824), or more likely Julien's grandmother Marie Claudette Mayfair (d. 1831)--since Mayfairs pass the Mayfair name down matrilineally. (And for Julien to have met Angelique while he lived at First Street in NOLA, that had to be after after 1857, when the house was bought.) Wtvr, Julien & Angelique's son was Jerome Mayfair (aka The Old Man), the father of Alexis Mayfair; and grandfather of Vervain & Nananne. Merrick Mayfair knew The Old Man Jerome learned voodoo in Haiti & taught it to Oncle Vervain.

So Oncle Vervain got his power indirectly from the Taltos/Talamasca genes of the OG White Mayfairs, but more directly from learning the natural magic of his paternal Afro-Caribbean (& White Mayfair) ancestors who were Voodoo practitioners; and his maternal Mesoamerican ancestors who practiced brujeria.

Anne Rice bounced all around from the Maya to Aztec to Olmec to Guatemala to Brazil, like wtf? I hate when she talks about non-white peoples & cultures; let alone talking through them. 🤦

So yeah, Oncle Vervain & his baby sister Great Nananne are Black Creole descendants of Julien Mayfair. And Merrick Mayfair's mother Sandra was Great Nananne's granddaughter--Nananne had a Black daughter that married a white man and had 12 kids (sheesh!); but Sandra came out too dark-skinned to pass, so Merrick's white grandfather rejected his own biracial child & made his Black wife give Sandra away to be raised by Great Nananne instead, jfc.

If Sandra had been born lightskinted, she'd've taken her white dad's name & left NOLA for Chicago & not been raised as a Mayfair at all. But instead, Great Nananne taught Sandra and her daughters Honey & Merrick everything she knew about Voodoo, Oncle Vervain, and Oncle Julien.

Merrick Mayfair, "Blood Children," & book!Loustat

AMC!Vervain's attitude towards Loustat is so interesting, cuz he seems to feel very differently towards vampires than book!Vervain did about "Blood Children." According to Merrick Mayfair, Oncle Vervain had a vision of her future when she was a kid, and KNEW she'd be Turned into a vampire:

Merrick believed she & Louis were destined to meet; she'd become a great witch & voodoo priestess, her reputation would reach LDPDL via the Talamasca, and she'd be called in to help Lou exorcise ghost!Claudia.

From what book!Dolly Jean told book!Rowan Mayfair, Oncle Vervain's heart broke to learn Merrick was doomed to become a vampire. But according to Merrick, Oncle Vervain still helped & supported her, doing nothing to intervene--likely cuz the Black Mayfairs knew that Oncle Julien's ghost (d. 1914) had already started meddling with Mayfairs, and it never worked.

Moreover, Tante Oscar foretold that Loustat would cross Merrick's path:

I've long wondered if Raglan James' "you should fear the other one" actually referred to Lestat, a la the books:

Cuz Tante Oscar warned the Mayfairs that the vampire to fear was Lestat, the French blonde one who talked funny. The Mayfairs were like chile who GAF about Louis; just shake a crucifix at him and he'll run scared. 😂🤣 LESTAT was the boogeyman for them--and Rolin clearly picked up on this, seeing the way AMC!Vervain reacted to him in the pilot script. So he told Tante Oscar to tell the rest of the Mayfairs to stay far away Lestat, who'd do "terrible things" to them; while Louis would never actually attack a Mayfair in a fight.

So, Merrick Mayfair helped Louis exorcise ghost!Claudia in Merrick, AND she helped Quinn exorcise ghost!Goblin in Blackwood Farm--two tortured undead children whose souls had been warped by vampirism and couldn't rest & cross over without Merrick there to guide them all--even at the cost of her soul/life (*cough* the Magical Negro sacrificed for the sake of white characters, ofc). I've always said that I HATE how Merrick died, and how AR kept treating Black women in her books; and I was really hoping Merrick would be in AMC!IWTV so she could get better representation. Alas, it never happened. Not only that, but Rolin also cut Oncle Vervain Mayfair, too, like wtf?

TBF, I do wonder if Rolin removed the Mayfairs cuz DANIEL fulfills much of their role already, esp. wrt parsing Claudia's diaries in S1; and getting the Talamasca's help (to free Louis from Armand's toxic clutches). Armand became the parasite haunting/plaguing Louis' mind, rather than ghost!Claudia haunting him, that Daniel needed to exorcise/purge.

BUT!

IF we get ghost!Claudia in S3 haunting Lestat, AMC could totally move Merrick & Vervain to Lestat's storyline instead (loathe as I am to have anymore Black characters exposed to Lestat until he's taken a few CRT classes & gotten a boatload of therapy.) That way we can still get Merrick's backstory, and see everything Oncle Vervain taught her, and see her seance with Claudia (and hopefully even get Oncle Vervain's NOLA flashbacks with Loustat!).

MAKE IT HAPPEN, ROLIN. 🙏

[wakingstarstuff]

the musical and lyrical motifs throughout Strange Trails ?????? i'm feral thinking about them???