GloomiUmi

The Vampire Armand and his powers of persuasion

cutie claudia - kirsten dunst in the iwtv movie (1994) parallels with bailey bass in s1 of iwtv (2022)

"...I’ve been calling to you for some time. And now here I am, and you can rest. I am the quiet you’ve been longing for. After all the garishness of life, the jostling, the clawing, the dull thrum of desperation in you...Will I get the fixes I need? Will I be somebody? Will I get the fixes I need to be somebody? But, Daniel, you already know who you’ll be...An ugly duplex back in Modesto. A job in an office with drab carpets and flickering lights. A woman in the mold of your mother, vacuuming on valium. A genteel drinking problem, like your father. Your wife counting down your thrusts. Your children shying away from you. All the confidence and hope of your youth replaced by a seething, boiling regret. Until one day, you’re at a traffic light. The light turns green, horns honking. You don’t move. Horns honking. You don’t move. A comfortable chair in a room that slants to the north. An easeful death...Rest. It’s okay. It’s okay. It’s okay. It’ll feel like a bath. Rest. Like honey on your tongue. It is the comfort we all long for. The end. Rest. Come. Come. I’ll hold you, you rest now."

-The Vampire Armand speaking to a young Daniel Molloy, IWTV Season 2, Episode 5: "Don't Be Afraid, Just Start the Tape"

“My place was never in this world... I sought and longed for something I could not quite name. But in you, I found it. To be lost and to be found, that is the lifespan of love. And in its brevity, its tragedy... this has been made eternal... Better this way... to fade... with your eyes gazing upon me..."

"You're killing people!"

"No, I'm killing boys."

From Frankenstein (2025)

Sinners (2025)

pictured above: the stunning Christina Ricci 🖤

“My dream role would probably be a psycho killer, because the whole thing I love about movies is that you get to do things you could never do in real life, and that would be my way of vicariously experiencing being a psycho killer. Also, it's incredibly romantic.”

the iconic actor and gothic queen starred in some of my favorite movies, such as Sleepy Hollow and Prozac Nation, with her performance as Wednesday Addams in The Addams Family and The Addams Family Values being one of my absolute favorite performances of all time. Her portrayal of Wednesday was (and always will be) an inspiration to little gloomy girls everywhere!

“Nah, we cousins.”

pictured above: the wonderfully talented Raúl Juliá.

Before he became known for film acting and playing the iconic Gomez Addams, Juliá acted in many Shakespeare in the Park productions, including the famous 1978 performance of The Taming of the Shrew alongside Meryl Streep. Juliá broke barriers, performing Shakespeare plays in both English and Spanish, and bringing the characters to life through his powerful delivery.

Juliá once said, “I could bring myself to it, I could bring my own culture, my own Puerto Rican background, my own Spanish culture, my own rhythms, my own feelings to Shakespeare because Shakespeare is too big. Shakespeare is too big to be put into one little way of doing him.” 

Pictured in the top two photos: Anjelica Huston’s mother, Enrica Soma, holding a baby Angelica in 1951

vs. stills of Anjelica Huston in the 1990s in her role as Morticia Addams in The Addams Family films (as seen in the bottom two photos).

One of my favorite poems (or perhaps my absolute favorite poem) of all time often has different meanings to me upon each re-read. As I get older and continue to go back to “For Annie,” I find myself analyzing it, finding an almost lullaby-like quality to the stanzas, one which adds to the narrators’ half-conscious and exhausted state of mind. However, it is the message that remains the same each time I read this poem that makes it my favorite. Poe writes about Death better than any other writer of his time, often personifying it and describing it as a blanket of gloom, as a comforting presence in an otherwise cold life. “Living,” to him, is an illness that can be solved by the warm embrace of Death, who alleviates his loneliness and despair. While some may read “For Annie” and see “Annie” as a real figure in Poe’s life (perhaps a name for his wife Virginia), I often choose to interpret it the following way, with Annie acting as a personified Death, ready to provide the narrator with her kiss:

Romantic, but wonderfully dark, Poe's "For Annie" looks at love, illness, life, and death. Poe depicts life as a fitful, horror-filled fever, emphasizing that death is the much desired cure.

Moreover, life is a "lingering illness," and death provides relief.

As the love of his life, Annie, sits at his bedside, the narrator can blissfully drift off into an eternal slumber after suffering from the fitful fever called life...Somehow, his love for Annie lives on, even after his earthly body is dead - Annie's love transcends earthly planes. Annie is giving the narrator permission to finally rest, eternally.

Rather than allowing her lover to go on suffering, the narrator knows Annie will soothe him instead. Perhaps “Annie” is an angel ready to take the narrator away, or perhaps “Annie” is Death herself, accepting the narrator into her arms at last. In “For Annie,” the narrator equates death with contentedness, rest, light, love, and warmth:

For Annie by Edgar Allan Poe

Thank Heaven! the crisis,

The danger, is past,

And the lingering illness

Is over at last—

And the fever called "Living"

Is conquered at last.

Sadly, I know

I am shorn of my strength,

And no muscle I move

As I lie at full length—

But no matter!—I feel

I am better at length.

And I rest so composedly,

Now, in my bed,

That any beholder

Might fancy me dead—

Might start at beholding me,

Thinking me dead.

The moaning and groaning,

The sighing and sobbing,

Are quieted now,

With that horrible throbbing

At heart:—ah, that horrible,

Horrible throbbing!

The sickness—the nausea—

The pitiless pain—

Have ceased, with the fever

That maddened my brain—

With the fever called "Living"

That burned in my brain.

And oh! of all tortures

That torture the worst

Has abated—the terrible

Torture of thirst

For the naphthaline river

Of Passion accurst:—

I have drank of a water

That quenches all thirst:—

Of a water that flows,

With a lullaby sound,

From a spring but a very few

Feet under ground—

From a cavern not very far

Down under ground.

And ah! let it never

Be foolishly said

That my room it is gloomy

And narrow my bed;

For man never slept

In a different bed—

And, to sleep, you must slumber

In just such a bed.

My tantalized spirit

Here blandly reposes,

Forgetting, or never

Regretting, its roses—

Its old agitations

Of myrtles and roses:

For now, while so quietly

Lying, it fancies

A holier odor

About it, of pansies—

A rosemary odor,

Commingled with pansies—

With rue and the beautiful

Puritan pansies.

And so it lies happily,

Bathing in many

A dream of the truth

And the beauty of Annie—

Drowned in a bath

Of the tresses of Annie.

She tenderly kissed me,

She fondly caressed,

And then I fell gently

To sleep on her breast—

Deeply to sleep

From the heaven of her breast.

When the light was extinguished,

She covered me warm,

And she prayed to the angels

To keep me from harm—

To the queen of the angels

To shield me from harm.

And I lie so composedly,

Now, in my bed,

(Knowing her love)

That you fancy me dead—

And I rest so contentedly,

Now in my bed

(With her love at my breast).

That you fancy me dead—

That you shudder to look at me,

Thinking me dead:—

But my heart it is brighter

Than all of the many

Stars in the sky,

For it sparkles with Annie—

It glows with the light

Of the love of my Annie—

With the thought of the light