remember then that it was love.

"it is plain that you move through the world by means of questions" || Marius de Romanus defense attorney || rp blog turned tangible // they/them // 25+ // call me eyr(e)

[all-fyre]

Followers and Those Perusing,

I will be tagging AMC's The Vampire Lestat show as:

amc tvl

amc tvl spoilers

amc tvl leaks

amc tvl screeners

amc tvl 3.01 (3.02, 3.03, etc.)

amc tvl 3.01 spoilers (3.02, 3.03, etc) [per episode]

(more under the cut)

If I'm extra pissed off, I'll probably tag:

anti amc tvl

For Anne Rice's book, I tag:

tvl

tvl spoilers

I may also tag:

the vampire lestat

the vampire lestat spoilers

tvl quotes

I prefer to separate the two as they are drastically different entities and I post about both.

In general, I tag:

spoilers

tvc spoilers

depending on what's appropriate.

As of right now, it's likely I'm going to be making commentary on the episodes as they come out and as soon as I'm able to watch and make sense of them, so please block what you need to to avoid what you don't want to see.

Thank you! 🩸

[frogtonguekiss]

oh the gorgeosity you are supremely divine

[frogtonguekiss]

its not even funny how much id like to have been birthed by her originally instad of how i am now

[frogtonguekiss]

she looks like a teacher i used to have a crush on in middle school lol thats really a coincidence

[frogtonguekiss]

do you think it feels nice to roll a quarter down her... breasts

[frogtonguekiss]

the male penguins are so lucky just to stand near her

[frogtonguekiss]

god's wife of amun

[frogtonguekiss]

rare type of woman... butler, fetch the viagra

[frogtonguekiss]

can she feel all the emotions i feel maybe more

[gaysie]

don’t care + didn’t ask + blood of akasha in me

[urtopia]

[all-fyre]

that shit was bad lmao

[vampire-dove]

Marius de Romanus, they could never make me hate you. I love my swagless freak of a wife

[oldbutchdanielmolloy]

PLEASE SHE HAS TO FUCK HER NARRATIVE FOIL OR SHE’LL DIE

[kakinou]

"He does have a queer identity which I think is a huge step into the direction of the otherness." — Sam Reid (x)

[orpheuslament]

i will personally never understand that thing people do when theyre like "i thought this was a good piece of art until i realised its fetish/pornographic" like why does art lose value if the artist was a little horny when they made it. why is that so scary. im sure a lot of the old masters were doing portraits of their lovers slightly bricked up & theyre still displayed in museums. why is sexual arousal not an acceptable source of inspiration when like every other emotion is. well i mean i know why sadly but i do not like it so i'll continue to complain about it

[all-fyre]

do you think they would pull a david with daniel? meaning making him swap bodies so he can get a younger one

Honestly? I have no idea what they'd do anymore.

I'd hate to see it, personally. It would feel kind of offensive to Eric Bogosian if they did? On the other hand, from a logistical/production perspective, it would be a solid fail-safe in case something happened or there was a sudden decline in his health. In that case, I could see them considering it depending on how pivotal Daniel's presence is in [future] plotlines.

[all-fyre]

your blog made me 12 hour long train ride so much better 💜💜💜

i saw your rp post and if that still applies, hit me up, except that id only be emotionally up to it after the season is over but we can talk about everything in the meantime because I do enjoy the show but

Gabrielle 😭 Marius 😭 (but esp Gabrielle my beloved you do not deserve this why, pls not her)

and also I feel like I need to reread the later books, im on qotd rn, need to be ~prepared~

so, yes, thank you for the posts, and your reblogs are the best, all the love and bye I'm gonna go sleep now

thank you so much!! 💜💜💜💜 that made my day :) I'm glad you got through that train ride lol, I was once on a rough one and they can be miserable.

lmao sounds like a plan, though! There may be more material to work with after the season ends, too 👀

you're welcome for the posts -- thank you for the ask! -- and all the love to you as well!

[all-fyre]

What are some of the your favorite Marius's tidbits from the books? I know you haven't read all of them yet so I'll take it from what you've read thus far!

I heard that he's going make his introduction in the show soon and I wanted to commemorate for papa's arrival lol

The funny thing about me and Marius is, I didn't start annotating my books -- any at all, ever [1] -- until I got to The Vampire Armand. I fell in love with Marius during my read of The Vampire Lestat, even more so during Queen of the Damned, but I was there to study Armand like a bug. When I go back to my copies of TVL & QotD, where I remember loving Marius the most,

I have yet to completely revisit TVL & QotD post-TVA, though I imagine I will if I find the time since all of the novels provide new perspectives on their predecessors and I'm more interested now in the overall picture than just avoiding spoilers and knowing plot beats.

However, I did recently go back and snip some bits I loved from Marius's TVL chapter with Lestat that I remembered, so while this is by no means a thorough account of my favorite Marius tidbits, these are still lines that stick with me and are no doubt part of that category.

In no particular order, here we go:

(long post, personal, death tw, abuse mention, discussions of religion and existence; quotes in images if you want to skip commentary)

which kind of goes hand-in-hand with this quote from TVA:

This is the philosophical Marius that I love. Despite his outward appearances, he struggles with his own intense emotions and how to deal with them. He knows the driving forces of people, of others, of himself. He understands the eternal internal struggle of morality and has had a lot of time to consider it.

Another thing to keep in mind as we dive deeper here is that I read TVL after the back-to-back deaths of my aunt, who was my adoptive mother, and my dog, who I raised from when I was 11. I took my grief into consideration with Anne's while I read, too. Needless to say, I was pretty raw lol. I wasn't sure what drove me anymore. I don't handle loss well and this was the worst pain I've ever felt in my life.

Then here comes Lestat, who refuses to despair for long (god the mastiffs hit me) and gives the middle finger to any damnation about it, then Marius, a calm, wise figure, and he's reminding me to remain in touch with humanity and my emotions. I used to be carried by that wonder he spoke of. At that time, I felt like it had left me, and all that remained was exactly that despair, anger, and cruelty. But Marius was saying anger can be strength, yet we should not allow despair to become cruelty simply because we are suffering. And I needed to hear that then as much as I do now.

I go back to read this quote any time I'm feeling the weight of existence. It makes me cry pretty much every time, as it did when I read it the first time. It reminded me of Frodo's "I wish The Ring had never come to me" exchange with Gandalf.

None of us can be spared our lifetimes, no matter the weight of them, no matter how hard they are to carry. We cannot ask someone wiser or more experienced than us to take that weight, either. We have to have it, we have to live it. A life is better than no life, even when that feels impossible to believe. We must have our lifetimes and we must feel them, for that is part of the human experience, and for that alone it should be considered beautiful.

Similar feelings towards these quotes. Again and again, we must plunge into the stream and swim as long as we can. Even vampires feel time and tragedy; that can be a comfort, that we cannot run from these things but instead must confront them, must learn to process them. It can -- and will -- bring us down. But that's part of the ride. The human spirit, our wills, are meant to triumph over time, not run from it.

It's about not giving in to the call of the dirt and the Earth, instead it's finding what we love in the world and holding onto it. We must go on, for love. We must rediscover that wonder in humanity even when times seem their darkest.

You have to live a life or you will succumb to nothingness. You have to embrace the full scope of what is has to give you or you will live in torture with it because there's not a lot you can do to change some things.

Again, here, there is the reminder that we are experiencing history every day. We have things special to our time -- clothes, technology, architecture, culture, art. Simultaneously, these elements have always existed. But our time is always special. If we blink, if we lose touch, we'll lose that wonder that these experiences are, ultimately, unique to us and our time. It's so easy to forget how astounding and lucky we are to be living in a world that connects us to each other. We are all part of the passage of time. I dread this often, so it helps to remind myself that this isn't always, or necessarily in general, a bad thing. I have to be grateful for what opportunities my era offers instead of only ruminating on the evils of it.

This one also made me cry. Trauma can make us feel like our very selves have been stolen from us. Personally, it's one of the things I find hardest to deal with. Some days, I have to get it out of my system that I feel everything has been taken from me, and on those days I look back at my experiences and where I've ended up. What can I take away from those years, though? That I'm still me, no matter what has been done to me. That with or without, there is a self inside me that cannot be defeated; there is an essence that cannot go away. Worse and worst can happen to me, even if it's irreparable, but I still have the capability to emerge with myself.

The idea of this "continuous knowing" is akin to my personal spiritual beliefs of the collective unconscious. (I've yet to actually read Jung, though I know the term comes from him; my views are more occult/esoteric with overlap.) Like Marius, I find comfort in this knowing.

As does this passage reflect my perspective on religion and atheism. I believe spirituality has its place, but that organized religion can cause people to lose sight of their actual empathy and actual humanity as well as their ability to experience a full life with all the world has to offer. [2] It's not that it's impossible to hold both at the same time, but I was raised in the Catholic Church, so my personal experience is one of "pleasure is sin!" and "love thy neighbor -- no, not that one!" I think a lot of people don't even consider questioning their life outside of those boundaries and, to me, that's the point of Lestat, asking "what does that all matter if I'm not enjoying myself? If it's so bad, then why doesn't God come get me?"

Less serious final notes:

I love Marius's love for the progress of humanity. "We sprang up from a crack between faith and despair" is a banger quote to me. I was trying to fit this in when I was talking about being reminded to love my era and the goodness of humanity, but I couldn't find a place I was happy with. I really think Anne Rice was on some "Age/Aeon of Horus" shit in TVL & QotD and this is part of it.

Marius de Romanus All-Timer right there. Aside from the humor, the philosophical implications of Marius going from "that's about all there is to me" to "I was still Marius, no matter what had been done to me" when his mortal self is dead wreck me. How he is and is not transformed psychologically and physically. Makes me want to look into Anne's definitions of "self" vs "soul" and how those change throughout the series and in her personal & religious beliefs.

This is the Marius I want(ed) to see on-screen. I was hoping for the tones of seasons one & two to carry over in some way in order for this philosophical side to shine through. Lestat carries these words with him, too, so it would be a shame to not see any of this or for Marius's role to be reduced.

Anyway, I'm sorry for the ramble, and thank you for asking!

------------------------------------

[1] When I went to double-check I didn't have anything underlined in QotD, I found one exception. (forgive that I literally took a picture of my book lol)

[2] I have no personal beef if you're religious. I'm not trying to start a fight, only expressing what I believe and how that applies to what parts of Rice's works I love. I can honestly even be [selectively] religious sometimes. I only have beef when one allows that religion to prevent them or others from doing what they want to do (within reason) and when that religion is used as justification for oppression and subjugation.

[lovecrumbss]

James Baldwin talking about love

[superhiki]

Daniel Molloy at the peak of his absent mindedness before Armand got fed up with his fledgling and sent him to grandmaker Marius for some R&R. This was a speed paint I got to do with some other VC fans and they helped considerably with lighting, colors, Daniel’s face, the window, and sooooo on.  pencil + photoshop! It’d be nice to do another one soon, once I’m feeling a bit better I will sketch somethings for folks to vote on. 

[hinoneko]

*sigh* fine, fine, i'll be the new doctor who showrunner. bring me two twinks, britain's tallest woman, and 1000 pounds worth of alumininamian foil

[hauntedbauhaus]

Something I’ve never liked is the characterization of Gabrielle as having abandoned Lestat. It implies that she did something wrong by moving on. But they were simply incompatible, as Armand realized. Lestat didn’t want to sleep in the dirt and explore uninhabited wilderness. Gabrielle was not going to spend eternity dressing up to go to the theater. He needed to be close to humanity, she found humanity irrelevant and confining. He can’t be alone, she needs to be. You can only compromise for so long.

And most importantly to me, she didn’t owe it to him to stay.

I think Anne does a beautiful job of exploring this in the book in a way that doesn’t cast blame on either side. They genuinely try to accommodate each other, for years, but their needs are not reconcilable.

Could she have picked a better time? Probably. Would there ever have been a perfect time? No. Lestat was always going to be devastated. But it is not Gabrielle’s responsibility to make him happy. Leaving him is part of her liberation, and I love that for her.

[all-fyre]

Some Thoughts on AMC's TVL Episode 3.01

(Major spoilers for the books and the episode. Spoilers all around, really. Abandon all hope ye who enter here.)

Let me preface this by saying that this is my first season after reading the books (IWTV - Blood and Gold). I've personally come so far from the person who was just excited to see Lestat & his concerts -- now I'm an Armand fan, looking for the books I fell in love with to be put on-screen.

I don't think that's what this show ever was.

I remember first seeing the teaser for TVL with the "I am the Vampire Lestat," believing I was getting everything before I had even finished TVL. I remember wanting nothing more than to see Lestat crash out and to see his heart on his sleeve while he tried to hold it all together. Needless to say, this is the part of me I held onto when trying to maintain my excitement leading up to and heading into Episode One. And honestly? That naive part of me enjoyed themselves.

I'm a sucker for a mockumentary, so they immediately won me over on that front. The narration, the surrealism, the dream-like quality, the manic editing, the general insanity -- I loved it. I had a blast with the new "tone" of the show. I can see the influence from Velvet Goldmine and I'm all about that.

I loved Vampire Daniel (Dan! lol). I loved loved loved Baby Jenks, I loved seeing Sam Barclay (I'm actually excited to see what he does this season ngl). I still hold that Sam Reid has the Lestat Tulpa and I can see him make his appearances when he can. All of the performances were stellar, as they always are. I have no doubt in the cast's capabilities and I can't wait to see what they have in store for us.

However --

There's A LOT I strongly object to. Be it because I love and prefer the books now or the show in general has gone off the rails, I can't be certain one way or the other. All I know is I'm legitimately pissed off and taken aback by some of the creative decisions being made this season.

To start, what the fuck do you mean "vampires can urinate"??? They can have sex, they can cum, they can go in the sun, they can piss. What makes them inhuman? Where is the great trauma, the great separation of being made immortal but unable to live a full life? Straight up, what's the downside? Why should vampires crave the company of other vampires if they can easily pass for human?

Consider the ripple effects. Sorry to bring Marimand into everything, but these changes continue to warp their relationship. In Venice, Marius was over double the age that Armand was in Dubai and Armand can stand in the sun there to take a phone call. What the fuck was Marius even doing if he's not hiding his nature?? What about Amadeo's curiosity, his parallel to Daniel and dooming of himself? What about Amadeo spending nights with him, the days without? What about him getting to the bottom of what was going on there? Where does that tension go?

What exactly are these vampires damning each other to? A life of luxury, wealth, and infinite time? One great big Gatsby party? There are far worse fates.

In Rice's works, it's the emotions, the suffering and persistence that makes them "human," not bodily fucking functions.

On top of that, as has already been discussed in the fandom, this "simple, little change" puts characters like Gabrielle and Marius in a different light than they were ever meant to be considered.

Speaking of Gabrielle, what the fuck is that!? I'm not calling her that. Or maybe I will to differentiate this parody from who Gabrielle truly is. I hated reading all the "omg! groomer incest!" cries on here before reading The Vampire Lestat and I hate them even more after having done so. I'm not even going to hear anybody out on this one -- Gabrielle represents the cold suffocation of motherhood. Particularly within her time period. She and Lestat's intimacy arises from shedding society and its roles and transcending the gender envy they held for each other. They were the same blood, now they're the same Blood. The son becomes the mother becomes the son.

Gabrielle is the first "you can be male, you can be female, you can be neither." She is the reader's first look into how positively transformative vampirism can be.

I'm not seeing that and I have little hope for it to be handled properly. I hope and want to be wrong. Maybe I have to steel myself because Gabrielle is in my Fave Five of Ricean Vamps and I already see what they're doing to Marius, who is also on that list. So be it. If Rolin & Co. want to take on these incredibly personable characters, they should respect them. I don't see respect for Gabrielle here, nor do I see a general respect for nonbinary/genderqueer folk.

What the fuck was that "pronouns" bit? I feel like I'm not seeing people be upset enough about this if I'm being honest. They made fun of us right to our faces and we're all pretty cool with it. In my opinion, completely unnecessary and pretty clearly "we're doing the bare minimum to appeal to both sides of our [potential] audience." Really gives perspective to the lack of inclusion in the marketing for this season as well as other questionable behind-the-scenes decisions.

That being said, perhaps it's no coincidence that Lestat ignoring a nonbinary character's pronouns (while complimenting their anatomy) occurs in the same episode his freshly-feminized mother appears. ("I love what you've done with your hair.") If it's supposed to communicate that Lestat selfishly genders Gabrielle/a for himself, not only are there better ways to show that, but it doesn't have to come at the expense of a beloved character, a beloved dynamic, and the show's own LGBT+ audience.

Regardless, and I could be wrong as I've long fallen out of Lestat Fixation, but with my whole heart I don't believe he'd misgender or force a gender onto someone like that. One thing about Ricean vampires is that they are able to utilize their positions outside of society to view societal roles & constructs from that outside lens. Again, "you can be man, you can be woman, you can be neither." He himself has a gender-fluidity.

Show!Stat feels colder. He doesn't seem to have that inherent love of humanity and of others that is so vital to his character. I think it's fun for a show to have the balls to piss us off and make us question what we think we know, but I don't appreciate bastardizing the book's themes and questions, which in some ways the show does translate and in others completely disavows.

Overall, I'm noticing a pattern of sacrificing elements in favor of this Lestat. I've said it as far back as season one (if only within my friend group then): this is Rolin's Lestat Show. If you're here for Rolin's Lestat Show, you just might enjoy yourself. However, I do truly feel that this enjoyment is in ignorance of the source material. You have to completely separate the two or you'll be miserable, and if you're not then I don't think you understood what the books were getting at.

I don't think we were ever going to get a 1:1 book adaptation. I don't want to put unreasonable expectations on something like that. But being given whatever this is, how can anyone be upset at show fans who hate the fuckin' thing? I don't carry that level of resentment (yet) simply because I didn't grow up alongside these novels the way others did, but how can we blame them? I see everything they're saying and agree with the majority of the criticisms. If you have read Rice's works, you know how different this is. You know what we're losing. I've suffered through shoddy adaptations that sacrifice characters and their arcs for little/no reason (Wheel of Time I fucking hate you) and I've felt that betrayal. So far, this hasn't hurt me as much as the others, so I'm still along for the ride, but I don't disagree with those who have long hopped off.

We'll see what happens when they get to Marius. I hate it, I hate it so much that I can't even be excited to see a character anymore. It's in the back of my head, how will they fuck him up? He already doesn't have his long hair which is a literal plot point for the main character of this season. He's already been misrepresented with the painting donation bullshit. How much has yet to be butchered? Seeing that they're framing Gabrielle to be this groomer-abuser that she never was, what else will be tainted? It sucks that something I used to look forward to now gives me dread.

Still, though, there are two wolves inside me. One who is excited to see what happens every week and another who mourns what we'll never have.

Which will evade the Wolfkiller? Will either of them? Looks like I'll have to wait and see.

I'll close out with some "theories"/observations I want to get out there.

-It's obvious Raglan has body-thieved Lestat lol. Justin Kirk has nailed Sam Reid's mannerisms, I love it, props to him. Someone is definitely body-swapped.

-It's obvious they're going to use Lestat's body-double guy as their Get Out Of Body Thief Jail Card. I'm guessing Lestat's body will visibly die or seem irreparable this season, he'll Body Swap, then we'll need to re-house him in the identical double. What if he body swaps to the double, then Lestat goes into Raglan while Raglan takes "Lestat" and leaves the double to die? No matter what, I think the body double is going to be part of this puzzle.

-I also don't see a lot of discussion surrounding the obviously bewitched man/vampire in the bookstore, the one beside the Armand Stan behind the counter. Could he be a spy for another vampire who's looking through him? Akasha? Armand? Fang Gang? I'm sure we'll see this seemingly random background character addressed at some point. He's just too odd.

-"He dies bad" about Daniel. Leave him alone 😭 please I love show!Daniel so much. He's not at the auction, so it's either a red herring or Daniel really dies. Even if it would kill me, killing him off would be interesting. I'd like to see the stakes (ha!) raised with some major character deaths. On the other hand, I think it's more likely that, like Lestat's "death" we'll see in this arc, Daniel suffers a similar fate or injury and we're meant to believe he's dead. For me, this opens the door to him being taken in by or needing to find Marius, tying in to their book arc. Now that gets me excited. Or! He's the one who's body swapped? Who knows.

-Armand and Louis literally give an eye and a leg to Lestat somehow. Or maybe it's burned from them, or taken at the Halloween Concert? The eye makes me think of Maharet & Mekare. They'll also likely use it as foreshadowing to Maharet utilizing human eyes to replace her own, which I also don't agree with because I think it'd be a cool reveal without it, but it's not that huge of a deal compared to other things.

As of now, I'm still hesitantly on this road with them. Let's see where that gets me lol