#lestat kin

it's an odd thing, this new age, these new ideas. not to say it's new by any means---god no. the teenage urge to seem or be older than you really are has existed throughout the years without fail. it's helped and harmed, wounded and aided. children--and that's what they really are, teenagers, they're children--forced into circumstances that require them to be older than they are. especially in my time when 16 was the age where noblemen would send their daughters off to another continent or, if they're lucky, neighboring country, to wed someone they'll resent for the rest of their brief life. even as a teenager enters young adulthood, there's still that reminder: young adulthood. naive and capable of many mistakes, only now they have the extra gift of perpetuating that violent, viscious cycle they were once part of---suddenly they're the one wedding a 16 year old, or they're looking down on their younger sibling for their perceived failings when they themselves were the one bullied in their youth.

when you're 21, the world is both for and against you. family still weighs heavy on your back and breaks your legs when you walk away from them. this goes doubly in small townships, small villages governed by one force, not the bourgeouis but damn close. wealthy, still, and old money---not a merchant's son, but a wolfkiller. imagine making a name for yourself that young. i never really got that, not in the way that my choice of career or lifestyle would warrant. mozart grew in fame at fourteen. proteges are always young, often in the single digits in age, and i, having barely escaped my teenage years intact, was bound to fall without having flown at all. but my icarus, the one with the wolf cloak?

lord, he soared.

there are constants in the people who exist on earth for any length of time. there will always be people who perpetuate cycles, who harm while having been harmed; likewise, people break the cycle. i have seen few who manage this, but it's possible. there will be people who can never be helped, people who help too much, people who are oh so wrong and people who are right in every way.

and, damn it. he fit so many of these tropes, these archetypes of humanity that are oftentimes more cynical than uplifting. he was never a cynic. he was hopeful, joyful, never allowing anyone to see the extent of his countless agonies. i read his book, though it was, for me, postmortem and post-resurrection, as i call this rememberence of my self. he hurt for years. he continues to hurt, each of the versions of him i stumble upon and witness destroy themselves again, again, and again. not unlike myself in this regard, the death of the self and perpetuity of it all.

perhaps he and i are constants ourselves. again, what is the phrase people use these days? in every universe? lifetimes and lifetimes will pass and we will continue to be, and we will continue to meet and love and fall apart. i think of victor hugo, les miserables, enjolras and grantaire and the tragedy of it all. a death hand in hand, a peaceful death i was never granted. it will always be this way, in every universe, but that at least means that there will always be that time, that period just after we move to paris, new york, san francisco, tokyo, anywhere but the inn in a village we could hardly call home. we will always have that golden moment, the revelation, the joy, the music, the theater. it will end, because all things end, don't they?

Oh Louis, Louis...

There's nothing I miss more than resting together and gently stroking your hair.

Lestat de Lioncourt Kin Aesthetic