1mperium

[1mperium]

Saint-Ex (2024), dir. Pablo Agüero

[1mperium]

(never degraded someone before) you have your mother's cruelty. and your father's cowardice.

[1mperium]

wake up babe new flavia material just dropped

[1mperium]

sure i could tackle certain topics on roman lifestyle/culture in order to show how they influence giulio nowadays and do it ooc to explain neutrally but from a narrative standpoint i think it's much more fun to approach some themes through the character's biased lenses like—yes that will definitely shrink any critical analysis of certain customs but also for a character who believes being the voice of his time and his homeland to be his given purpose then i think i should actually let him fulfill it. the narrator narrates the character being the narrator etc etc

[1mperium]

‘touching‘ shot by vassilis karidis for fantastic man, issue 30

[1mperium]

never ask for giulio's opinion on your work if you're an artist/writer/artisan of any kind, he WILL be gratuitously cruel about it

[1mperium]

there is noooo distinct sense of familiarity/kinship that giulio experiences with other vampires and he does not think of them as being anything remotely similar to what he is, no more than you'd consider a wolf and a chihuahua the same species—clearly there's a striking slightly grotesque reminiscence if nothing else then due to the fact that blood consumption is a shared trait but giulio has never referred to himself as a vampire or to his condition as vampiric. he interacts with vampires as little as he can because he instinctively perceives them as competitors rather than potential companions, and covens are conceptually quite alien to how he lives. if asked he will call himself a vrykolakas, which is the term he was called by in byzantium, but like it isn't just his initiative other vampires will register him as different, too—giulio won't necessarily care to correct the terminology but he DOES expect them to acknowledge the fact that similar does not mean alike

[1mperium]

giulio's biggest red flag is the fact that he is an aries

[1mperium]

[1mperium]

The past is never finished, the future is scared. What if we aren’t descendants of anyone but ourselves?

Victoria Chang, "The Old Room" from The Trees Witness Everything

[1mperium]

it’s the fact that сохранить [səxrɐˈnʲitʲ] means to keep/protect/save in Russian and сахранити [saxrǎːniti] means to bury/entomb in Serbian for me

[1mperium]

Mahmoud Darwish, Journal of an Ordinary Grief

Zbigniew Herbert, “Report From A Besieged City”

[1mperium]

a kiss influenced by [blood!], @allmonster

even though he is very young, there is something ancient about the way olrox feeds. like a dark-scaled snake wading through the grass, he stalks the immobilized prey, feeling it with the ghost-touch of his nails like a snake would with its forked tongue. the man, deeply asleep, does not react. the blood will taste peaceful, instead of soured by fear. even so, giulio does not mind frightened meat. he watches, lean as a mast while his cloak flutters weakly, as olrox tilts the man's head and dips at the center of that tender curve, sinking his slender fangs into the supple layer of flesh. blood spurts. there is something ancient about it, too.

a beautiful hand, the hand of his goddess, curtains his vision as to shield it from a violent sun—the speckled vision of a feathered snake overlaps with the image of olrox, and giulio does not resist it. it coils around his fingers and moves them of their own accord before olrox's long hair may wet in the blood that slicks his chin and the collar of his shirt, pulling it behind his pointed ear as the flat of his earring dangles against giulio's knuckle.

olrox seems to stiffen for an instant. when their eyes meet, giulio feels considered by the bottomless slit of a viper's pupil. snakes are sacred to all gods worth praying to. though he may not know which earn olrox's worship, he can tell a sign when it is being handed over to him so easily.

giulio's fingers travel along the perfect angle of olrox's jawline all the way down to his chin. thick blood soils the cuff of his doublet, but his grasp holds as he turns the other's head to face away from the cooling corpse. where olrox's lips glisten blood-red, giulio leans to lap at it. it is not a friendly kiss, nor one between lovers; it is not even a kiss, but olrox's pupil blow wider than a viper's and the bridge of his eyebrows relaxes in slight surprise. the approval of his goddess vibrates through giulio like a horsehair string. ‘clean yourself. you are no animal.’

[1mperium]

ghosts in classical texts can tell the future but they have none of it themselves, they are crystallized as shadows in an eternal present, and in a more blissful condition so are gods—similarly, as a god-blooded human AND a technically dead one, giulio cannot see his own future, not even the slightest glimpse

[1mperium]

for the context the fc i use for giulio's mother is a neapolitan singer and the way her music (especially this song) combines rural/folk imagery and hauntingly intense feminine choirs IS the vibe giulio brings to the function

[1mperium]

giulio thinks science is great but he draws the line at psychoanalysis

[1mperium]

i lost the original post but like class is a key element to understanding the themes underlying giulio's character—where class means contradiction between the aristocratic and elitist nature of the vampire in general and giulio in particular who IS old world aristocracy representing the most ancient form of a pre-industrial that knew no class awareness, and the post-industrial reality that has developed said awareness and the very notion of class, where he lingers and that he opposes just by existing as THE forgotten and surpassed alternative. giulio is classist in the way that he doesn't acknowledge that classes exist simply because he's always belonged to the privileged élite, and because he is a creature that is, by definition, untouched by the changes of the world... the poor are poor, the wealthy are wealthy, aristocrats have their own separate status and this is how the world works despite how much it can pretend to shift and change

but class also means that for someone whose noble lineage matters greatly to him, giulio is immersed in a kind of imagery that draws plentifully from the raw, brutal, mystical poverty of the rural mediterranean (italy in particular)—a reality that was prevalent until the '60s, made of entrails, bonfires, cycles, sunburnt countryside and flies-swarming rot which is EXACTLY what i define as mediterranean gothic. he is immersed in it because giulio is in fact almost ghoulish in the way that he as the vrykolakes of folklore does not just drink blood but he guts people, handles entrails, works clay, performs rituals etc in a way that is deeply reminiscent of a lifestyle that is not even working class but beautifully, dreadfully, peasant