oh aeneas we’re really in it now

Dysfunctional vampire families being super critical of anything their childe likes.

Vampires who just want something with yellow polkadots but the store people keep bringing them red velvet.

The store is staffed with Renfield types who are obsequious to the vampires’ faces and super catty behind their backs.  “Akasha wants something in gold for under 1500.”  “Yeah, THAT’s gonna happen.  When’s the last time she went shopping, the eighties?”

“But it’s my masquerade!  I’m the one who’s going to be seduced by moonlight beneath the crystal chandelier, not my sire!  Why can’t she accept that?”

Insecurity that it’s stolen valor to wear a tiara when you weren’t actually nobility

A sire who says the budget is unlimited because his little childe gets whatever she want (Staff: “That is so creepy”)

“You’re spending the entire budget of your vampire theater” “But it’s my special niiiight!”

Quick portrait sketch artist to show them how they look

like, are they in cahoots. can they laugh together. do they have a similar enough or at least complementary enough outlook that they can connect over something being funny (even if it's funny in a fucked up way! sometimes those are the best in-jokes!)

she is the maid's BOSS

they are not FRIENDS

the maid probably does not DESIRE her friendship

the servants are not your confidants in this scenario. IRL, the notion of the Loyal Family Retainer was most common in sentimental literature for the employing class (which btw was like upper-working-class on up, although the lower you go, the more work the family would be doing alongside them) and sometimes weaponized by them to try and get extra emotional or physical labor out of domestic workers

did emotional intimacy develop sometimes? absolutely- and it was often encouraged for upper-class 19th-century children in the US and UK, who could spend a lot of time with their nanny and in the servants' sphere in general. was classism a factor? 100%.

Dysfunctional vampire families being super critical of anything their childe likes.

Vampires who just want something with yellow polkadots but the store people keep bringing them red velvet.

The store is staffed with Renfield types who are obsequious to the vampires’ faces and super catty behind their backs.  “Akasha wants something in gold for under 1500.”  “Yeah, THAT’s gonna happen.  When’s the last time she went shopping, the eighties?”

“But it’s my masquerade!  I’m the one who’s going to be seduced by moonlight beneath the crystal chandelier, not my sire!  Why can’t she accept that?”

Then I told him that I felt that Norman Bates, if he were a painting, would be painted by Hopper, and he agreed. So we had kind of that discussion, writer and actor, about the character. He had an incredible grasp on Norman Bates and the situation that he was in. I think Tony Perkins must have known what it was like to be trapped. —Joseph Stefano, screenwriter, in The Making of Psycho (1997)

PSYCHO dir. Alfred Hitchcock (1960)

Been practising my BG skills lately! process pics under the cut