your local cryptid

[adult ✦ she/they ✦ sometimes I post art] dnd, vampires and mcyt enthusiast. never getting over c!crimeboys

[cryptidslair]

back on the evil masterplan thing because I can't stop thinking about how it's such a misunderstanding of who armand is that it's genuinely baffling that these are the same people who wrote him in s2.

for some reason they felt the need to retcon everything we've seen of him so far just to drop the underwhelming and overdone plot twist that armand has been lying about everything the whole time.

at some point during his cartoon villain monologue they quickly mention that armand planted the steins just to fuck with louis's head when in s2 the implication was always that he was coddling louis and making sure that he wasn't unhappy so that he wouldn't fucking leave him. the way armand controlled louis was specifically by "protecting his happiness", by keeping him calm and content in his gilded cage. he made himself subservient to louis in order to make him dependant on him. THAT'S how armand manipulates, out of fear, out of his obsession with control. it's something we're never told but that, in its subtlety, makes him so complex and fascinating. so it all gets thrown out the window to me when all we see him do is be evil for the sake of being evil without a genuine attempt at an arc or motivation.

and it's wild because the set up was there. we see him get involved with his AA cult at the beginning of the season and as ridiculous as it seems, it makes perfect sense. armand seeks purpose, he seeks control, he seeks routine, he seeks belonging. so it makes sense that, after watching everything he had built and "protected" for 70 years crumble, he needed to find something else to cling to. and they started heavily hinting at that thing being opposing the great conversion. so why set everything up for it and then not deliver??? why make it about louis instead? WHY NOT MAKE IT ABOUT LESTAT? especially with how little we have seen of their relationship, it could have been the perfect chance to delve into it a bit more and finally fucking do something with the tension that has been bubbling under the surface all season.

also while I'm at it— why the fuck did they make him purposely plant regina for louis to find? if he wanted to torture louis by threatening her life, why not just make it be louis' own doing, why not have him deal with the consequences of his actions for getting an innocent human girl involved in vampire affairs due to his own grief?? it would have been way more compelling and it would have at least tied in with louis's arc too but no, they just HAD to let us know that spooky evil armand has been behind it all along.

[kira-kui-n]

"get him pregnant" well thats not my thing but to each their own

"get her pregnant" *takes up my sword and shield* i wont let you do that to her. ......................

[cryptidslair]

my conspiracy theory is that they put armand in that manbun to distract us from how horribly ooc he was written in that scene because for the first 5 minutes I genuinely could not focus on anything happening because of how good he looked

[cryptidslair]

I keep thinking about post-divorce loumand hooking up at the auction and/or flirting like they used to do in paris and it's making me so unbelievably dizzy,, I need to be put down

[cryptidslair]

and to think I was happily #loumandposting just a few days ago. take me back

[cryptidslair]

the thing about that louis and armand scene is that it could have been so good had the context been literally anything else.

we could have had louis and armand finally coming to a moment of genuine understanding of each other, we could have had them actually deal with the fallout of their 77 years together seeing as it was, yknow, literally the driving force and main conflict of the previous season but that this season chose instead to completely ignore up until this very point. we could have had that moment where armand is finally seen for the first time in his life and it would have been EVERYTHING to me as someone who has been waiting for so long for the show to acknowledge armand's desperate and bottomless need to be loved.

and the thing is— it could have still been fucked up!! it didn't need to be sanitized in any way, this show's never been clean, armand's never been good. he's fucked up and evil, but he's not a moustache-twirling villain with no apparent motivation other than to make others suffer. he's a survivor, he's desperate, he's a scared child forever trapped into a fawn response, we know this. we know he does heinous shit to protect whatever it is that he's currently clinging to because he needs to belong to something or someone in order to feel like he's anything at all. but to remove all of his complexity and make him go after louis so violently and with this nonsensical evil masterplan when louis has clearly left him alone for the past 2 years, meanwhile daniel and lestat aggressively berate him, mock him and publicly humiliate him and get none of this violence directed at them is crazy. it's disrespectful to him and especially to louis who is just brutally tortured and forced to acknowledge his past "sins" and apologize to the guy who lied and manipulated him for 77 years. and then as if that wasn't enough they make him sympathize and be kind to him, by using armand's traumatic past as a throwaway sob story to be like "see? he's just misunderstood :((" and call it a day on armand's whole arc for the season. and jacob and assad are giving it their all in that performance god bless them, and in any other context I would have been writhing on the floor in agony after seeing armand break and cry for the first time in the show, but the way they do it here doesn't feel earned or genuine at all. it's unsatisfactory and so racist and so disgusting and it turns a scene that I would have otherwise been obsessed with completely sour and unwatchable.

[cryptidslair]

I don't even know what to say about the finale, I've just been sitting here trying to precess everything but I can't wrap my head around how a show so good could have possibly come to this.

[cryptidslair]

turning armand into a moustache-twirling marvel villain with no attempts at a clear character arc or motivation and then using his traumatic past as just a throwaway sob story to make us sympathize with him in a way that doesn't feel earned AT ALL in the context of the scene, endlessly brutalizing louis and torturing him and forcing him again and again to acknowledge his past mistakes and to apologize and be sympathetic towards his abusers while all the other characters (especially lestat!!!!) get away with all the horrible shit they do ALL THE FUCKING TIME, completely rushing dm and ruining their chemistry and development by having the actors just stand there and deliver exposition while all the interesting things happen off screen, making daniel into a useless dumbass by dropping the documentary as a framing device and leaving him with nothing to do instead of being a much needed grounding presence to question the narrative,, which inevitably leads to lestat's perspective never being interrogated and the audience never getting to properly delve into him and his past like we did with louis in a way that feels so lackluster for "THE lestat season"— and so so much more,, i don't know man. idk what to say

[cryptidslair]

I don't even know what to say about the finale, I've just been sitting here trying to precess everything but I can't wrap my head around how a show so good could have possibly come to this.

[mag-nifico]

How am I supposed to tell my family that I’m giddy because my parasocial love of my life ripped out his partner/clown/friends intestines and waved them around like a lasso on stage ??

[sorrowknivez]

the rain during cemetary drive was a paid actor because what do you mean the sky started opening its heart at the very chorus

[romancechimique]

ray taking out his in-ears to hear the crowd sing happy birthday to him 😭😭😭

[gerardwayspostnutclarity]

MCR Firenze

[cryptidslair]

I keep thinking about loumand hooking up at the auction and/or flirting like they used to do in paris and it's making me so unbelievably dizzy,, I gen need to be put down

[cryptidslair]

"you carry yourself well" but this time it's armand saying it, hinting at louis' missing leg and it's his sort of fucked up and weird way of showing that he's glad to see louis has recovered from [insert whatever happened with akasha here] and whatever part armand may have played in it. "I like how you withhold" but it's louis saying it, probably in a mocking, bitter tone now that armand's facade has dropped and everything between them has been laid out in the open. "tricky" "what's that?" "us" and it's this weird unexpected tension brought about by the end of the world and loss and not so subtle glances while trying to outbid each other and god knows what else. it's about a line that hasn't been crossed in years and that they know should remain untouched, for both their sakes.

and then they make out about it. can anyone see my vision??

[cryptidslair]

I keep thinking about post-divorce loumand hooking up at the auction and/or flirting like they used to do in paris and it's making me so unbelievably dizzy,, I need to be put down

[wolfythewitch]

I lied I colored it. I think i made janine too short sorry HSSJSVSKD I was working off memory

[gerardwayspostnutclarity]

skin & bone

[iotsketches]

i’ve hired these bugs to stare at you

[strawberrycamel]

we really should be calling it fanworks, not content

[strawberrycamel]

I'm here for fun and community not to rp a mega corporation's underpaid social media intern