Hello, hello. I am a film nerd (specifically noir). This is gonna be a long post! After the third episode, I noticed some really interesting parallels the episode three, especially visually, has with the film The Third Man.
Set in post-WWII Vienna, the 1949 film follows Holly Martins, an unsuccessful American author, searching for his childhood friend, Harry Lime, who offered him a job there. Quickly, Holly gets pulled into a web of deceit after finding out that Harry is dead. Meanwhile, the city has been divided into districts overseen by Britain, the US, and Russia, meaning that no one can pass through it without facing scrutiny. Holly wanders the bombed-out streets of the city, trying to find out how and why his friend got murdered. In a twist, Holly discovers that Harry was never dead, and has been secretly navigating the torn up city through the sewer system the whole time. Harry had been watching Holly throughout everything.
That remind you of anyone? The scene of Louis and Armand in the sewer, though not a literal chase, bears a visual and thematic resemblance.
In this scene, Armand exerts a startling amount of power over Louis in a cat and mouse game of whether he should live or die. Their back and forth dialogue and the lighting scheme both bear resemblance to the dark but fast-paced mood of film noir.
Though Harry puts on a tough face, he's a dead man walking. He's on the run from everything he's done and Holly and him can't see eye to eye. His actions and past are a shadow over everything, and he has to go underground to hide from them.
Louis, similarly, is followed everywhere by the shadows of his past. Armand is not far behind, his powers meaning that they he can see into Louis' troubled psyche. In this scene they are adversaries, but the power always lands squarely back with Armand. Unlike the ending of the The Third Man, Louis lives after their chase. Harry Lime, especially given the strictures of the noir genre, had to die for the story to have its narrative arc.
Louis and Armand come back to the surface world, uneasily. This subverts noir endings, which makes sense -- they are vampires, bound by different tensions. Armand's love of Louis triumphs, just as Holly's friendship for Harry isn't enough. But, there's disaster that follows for both pairs nonetheless.
The rise of AI slop & the endless waves of books that feel written to spec by people who are terrified of their own audiences has given me a new appreciation for Anne Rice. It's not even that she didn't give a fuck; she cared passionately and was famously, publicly hurt by the reception of at least one of her novels, but she never let that distract her from her mission of writing whatever the fuck she wanted. No one could write Anne Rice's books except Anne Rice. They are singularly, entirely hers and while I won't pretend she was a perfect person or it's wrong for readers to be offended or uninterested in spending their one and only life on earth reading something that offends them, I also think her work is valuable and humane and also often hilarious and it's not a crime to have a muse you adore.
i love queerbaiting except when it's in shows i don't like then it's gauche and embarrassing. but when the show is good it's chic. that's my stance on it and i will never change my mind
do non bay area people know that the slanted apartment in i love boosters is a dramatization of an actual (super expensive) building that started sinking and tilting in san francisco. i hope you all know this it makes it 10x funnier and more apt
Inviting journalist and author Daniel Molloy to your house to write your story, referring throughout to "our readers", and then turning around and saying "I didn't consent to you publishing a book about me" is the most ldpdl behaviour ever I love him
Literally using Claudia's private diaries to tell his own story and then acting hard done by because the book now has personal consequences for him ohhhh louweeee you're the worst
having a job is very weird bcos by and large your coworkers will be a variety of ages and you will not all be at the same stage of life. your coworker will be like, well I’m off home to spend time with my husband & child, what are you going to do with your evening? and you’re like, well, I plan on playing Rollercoaster Tycoon for as much as it as possible
I am so sick and tired of having to charge stuff every day of my miserable life!! My phone, my watch, my headphones, my vibrator, my backup vibrator, my emergency vibrator, the ancient cursed amulet of darkness that whispers to me....it's too much!!!
non-writers will never understand the mental illness of writing an entire conversation in your head while doing dishes and then forgetting every word the second you open a blank doc
