Morally Dubious Sorcerer addicted to Blood Amulets

Aromantic Demisexual -- Ao3 AngrilyBubbles Love me some sweet sweet media analysis - Yes, I do go to school for it "I am the Devil's Minion and he grants my every wish" -- IWTV killing it with the delicious toxic gays

[angrybubbles]

Meta, Criticism, and Analysis

You'll find Incest/fauxcest, Marimand, and other conversations around underage relationships on my blog, so follow at your own risk.

All of my art is tagged #art of mine 🥰 personal posts and general posts are tagged #thoughts and musings, and fics/microfics are tagged #fics of mine.

Postcolonial Analysis of AMC's Interview with the Vampire

Postcolonial Changes to LouClaudia's Narrative Progression

This Adaption is Postcolonial

Armand - Anxious Manifestation of Assimilation

AMC IWTV Meta

Season 3: Gabistat Incest 1 2 3, Storystructure, Do Vampires Make Art?

Vampires Symbolize Death: Grief and Repression, Dramatic and Passionate, Slow and Justified, Resentment and Innocence

Claudia and What Makes her a Monster

Loumand Divorce, Loumand tried, Loumand Bench Scene and Gothic Rain, Loumand and Art, Loumand are each other's Victim Types, Why Loumand Work Together, Loumand and Self-Identity

Armand and Memory Ability, Armand Threatens Santiago Scene Breakdown

Daniel and Parkinson's, Daniel and AIDS, Daniel's Sexuality and AIDS, Daniel's Narrative Role, Daniel "Dog-Boy" Molloy, Daniel's Book

Louis's Mental Health vs Relationships, Louis and the Philosophy of the Aesthetic

Daniel and Louis Lifeline

Devil's Minion Turning, Devil's Minion Flaws

Phones and Perspective S3 Theory, s3 Armand is Hungry..., Danlou Conflict s3

AMC and TVC Blended Meta

IWTV and Love/Hurt, The Anne Rice of it all, AMC IWTV is Postcolonial, Marius and the Horror of Benji and Sybelle, Muslim Santino Headcanon (Beta)

Armand Backstory Theory, Armand: Death Drive and Religion, Armand's Abuse in Loumand/Devil's Minion, Was Armand "Donated" in TVA?

Marimand is CSA taboo, Marimand is about Renaissance Orientalism, Marius and Stoicism (Beta), Marius and Vampiric Character Flaws

Other Meta

Gothic Horror Quick Hint, Gothic Horror Incest and Taboo, Gothic Lens, Uncanny Abstractions - Unreliable Narrators and Narrative Frameworks, Unreliable Narrators and "Lying"

The Talamasca is not Queerbaiting it's about how spies use people 😭

[reticent-vampire]

at least we got armand in a bun

[officialpenisenvy]

paul de pointe du lac: thank you for abusing my brother since it's the only right way he can be loved

lestat: im a woman

[buttstat]

which vamps' traumatic memories would you get while they feed on you?

Louis

Lestat

Claudia

Armand

Nicholas de Lenfent

Daniel Molloy

Gabriella de Lioncourt/Vece

someone else, elaborate?

Remaining time: 6 days 9 hours

(as in, the memories accidentally slip into you as they feed and you can see them/experience flashes of them. you can vote as which you would endure the easiest or which would you want to see or just based on your fave chara... etc.)

[holewithoutorgans]

Crazy how much beautiful storytelling in the costume and set design we lost.

Like, the dubai penthouse adds so many layers of complexity and raises so many juicy questions about loumand and how they spent their years together. The set design compliments the nuanced from acting from Jacob and Assad perfectly.

[gloomiumi]

IWTV s2 promo posters

[heliza24]

One thing I can’t stop thinking about is:

I can follow the line of thinking that says that Armand would feel like he was owed an apology from Louis, and that he wanted to punish him. I don’t agree with it, but I get it.

But you’re telling me that Armand planned this shit for three years? That he used some sort of magical CSI level program to search all the humans in the world to find one who looked like Claudia and then arranged international documents to get her to America to torment Louis repeatedly?

The Armand that flailed as soon as the coven presented him with a choice, the Armand that erased Louis’s memory because how else was he supposed to cope with the events of San Francisco, the Armand that didn’t even notice that Daniel was about to fuck up his whole life because he remembered how hot he was?

He does evil bad things sometimes, but guys. He’s not smart. He’s not a mastermind. He is flying by the seat of his pants at all times.

Assad spent so much time saying “I don’t think he’s a mustache twirling villain, he’s always just fighting to survive” in interviews and then they just went and wrote him as a mustache twirling villain with a years long master plan. Have him spontaneously hurt Louis when Louis wouldn’t listen to his amends. Sure. But don’t try to tell me Armand has been planning this for years!

[angrybubbles]

Grieving at the fact this season did have so many good ideas, it just... was all in the wrong order and the wrong narrative frame. And seemed to want to punish Louis for existing.

Anyway, doing this fix-it fic is gonna be fun.

[angrybubbles]

That moment you realize the adaption was so bad, that you don't know what happens in TVL the book, so you might have to actually read it.

[collegeboysam]

[angrybubbles]

Grieving at the fact this season did have so many good ideas, it just... was all in the wrong order and the wrong narrative frame. And seemed to want to punish Louis for existing.

Anyway, doing this fix-it fic is gonna be fun.

[angrybubbles]

[3x07 - Impressions]

The long table hallucination was really good. I think that this season would have been better if it had been either the primary narrative frame (Lestat gets his head lopped off in episode 1, so we get the A plot of his muses for 5 or 6 episodes and a B plot of what the other characters are doing in the wake of the beheading), or it should have happened in episode 5, and the seance comes after.

I think the seance would have been much, much, much better if Claudia was in the Long Table hallucinations, and then we got Claudia telling them to leave her the fuck alone afterwards. Also if the writing was less anti-black, but that's the elephant in the room.

"Thank you for loving him. For loving him the way he needs to be loved" is foul, considering Lestat hasn't even admitted to the abuse and it's coming from Paul. I'm sorry. I can get behind the "voice of god" thing, because fuck yeah Paul du Lac is that bitch, but for this? Without Lestat admitting to that failure? Without Lestat being able to admit to whatever the fuck happened at the trial? It not only feels unearned, it feels like a SLAP in the face after the Loumand torture scene.

I want to love the Loumand torture scene. I think, overwhelmingly, it is in-character for Armand. The situation outside of it, as in the events leading up to it, do not feel in-character for him, however. As most people have mentioned, it was improperly foreshadowed, and I think improperly utilized. This also would have been a more powerful scene if it came before the seance, because it would have made Armand's line of "you were my Claudia" ring with Louis's despair and victimhood better.

I do, however, just think Lestat should have been the one being tortured and interviewed by Armand. As I said before, lopping his head off in the beginning or middle would have made better use of screentime dedicated to the muses, and so Armand getting his head to be the one to put it back on would have held more tension AND made the apology of "the failures" feel impactful and cohesive. Armand demanding and torturing an apology out of Lestat would feel simultaneously justified - but also intense and morally gray. That's what we want from Gothic Horror. It would also have paired really really really well with Lestat's realization at Gabriella's abuse. If he can "apologize" for Armand and mocking his abuse at 12, maybe it would thematically resonate with him realizing he didn't deserve being abused by Gabriella either. Let them be narrative foils, or just don't bother.

And finally, Damien Atkins was underutilized as Magnus. I loved his performance so fucking much. Christopher Heyerdahl also absolutely killed his role as Marius, and once again -- there should have been more of this uncanny valley with the muses as Lestat reflects. This was very successful storytelling. It should have been used more.

(I couldn't even feel the thrill of Louis and Magnus both being dressed in red. I can't believe they took a wrecking ball to my Marimand|Loumand cathedrals before I could even feel good about them being confirmed. What a joke.)

Anyway, I'd still say this was a failure of a season. I'll give more thorough critique over the week, as I look closer at each character and how the writing really did them wrong. I'm so sorry Louis, Daniel, Gabriella. Armand, they also used you so poorly, and that is a travesty. Solid 5/10, with 4.5 of those points being off for truly bone-chilling racism. That scene could have been interesting if the narrative called for it. It did not. I am disappointed they used it like that.

[reticent-vampire]

[helianthus21]

Daniel

[angrybubbles]

[armandyke]

armand

[angrybubbles]

[jao-xd]

This is why we keep talking about racism. This is why we take racist behavior from creators and public figures seriously, past and present, because it does not exist in a vacuum. It feeds into a culture that normalizes violence, ignorance, disrespect, and dehumanization toward Black people not only from white people, but from anyone taught to see us as less than.

This was a historic Black cemetery in Florida and people vandalized and destroyed the graves. That level of hatred does not come from nowhere.

So if conversations about racism, accountability, and protecting spaces from people who have shown they are racist or harmful make you uncomfortable, this probably is not the page for you, and that is fine.

Because every single day there is another story. A racist influencer hurting somebody. A Black child being called slurs. A Black family targeted. A graveyard destroyed. Every day Black people are reminded that simply existing can make us a target.

We will still laugh, joke, create, and enjoy ourselves. But when it is time to speak seriously about what is happening to us, we are going to do that too. And if that feels “too political” or “too much” for you, then this space probably is not meant for you.

[lottafeelingsinhere]

So was the additional gratuitous Louis torture meant to be a cute little callbk to this? Bc if so, the writers should maybe die. Idk. Probably didn't need to show something like that when you have already shown that you know the exact context of racialized violence behind it and why it's fucked up, but okay. And for why? (I know why. The answer is racism. It's almost always racism).

[dmtruther]

It’s worse, OP. So much worse.

That line in S1 is a reference to the 1811 German Coast Uprising. America’s largest slave revolt, which was in Louisiana along the river road known as the “German Coast” because of the number of Germans who settled there. 100s of enslaved people participated in this revolt.

It just so happened that this was the location of the Pointe du Lac plantation in the books, and that Anne Rice based the story of Louis’ slaves revolting against the vampires on that historical event (she used a lot of real-world historical events as inspiration for analogous events in her novels).

Anne had Louis murder his overseer and appoint one of his slaves (Daniel) as the new overseer. Daniel (not Molloy) turned out to be very clever and good at the job, but he figures out that Louis and Lestat are vampires and leads a rebellion they end up having to flee from. The real German Coast uprising was led by Charles Deslondes, an enslaved man who was the overseer of a plantation.

Unlike many of the other leaders, Charles did not get decapitated. Instead, he was dismembered, shot, and burned. Many of the other leaders had their heads put on pikes and displayed along the Mississippi River as a warning to future would-be rebels. There is a memorial to them at the Whitney Plantation - a closed garden in which silence must be observed.

[loving-the-world-since-00]