femmecel

weird and unsettling I’m going to outsource that to my therapist { @femmecel over at ao3 }

[femmecelworld]

holdover snack for the ‘anointed’ universe / a couple of cool guys series:

helloooooo my beautiful blueberries! (thanks to everyone who commented or submitted a question 💖) I’m going to give y’all something to tide you over until the next meal because I’m not sure when my next story will be done. so from here on out, you’re risking spoilers! beware all ye who enter here, etc

(splitting here just cuz too many long text posts stress me out)

after the conclusion of ‘fairytale’, I know I left things on a bit of a cliffhanger (I have been warning y’all about a romencken divorce, however temporary it might be) so I’ll give you an idea of what’s coming up / some easter eggs you might’ve missed until the next story.

I have said this before on here, but I’m bringing Tabitha back (because I LOVE her and I will not apologize for having correct opinions ♥️) but before you freak out pls remember I said the romencken divorce is temporary. Also, as many of you reflected in your distress in the comments… Mencken is not being a great partner right now or giving Roman what he needs. 1) the premise of their entire situation ofc but 2) Mencken is not capable of the empathy and emotional support Roman needs. He can barely recognize his own flaws and issues, much less support Roman getting help. Roman needs some space so he can heal and focus on himself for a bit. Obviously we are out of canon by now and while one of the great and terrible tenets of a tragedy is how people seem incapable of change or locked into their positions with no way out… I do think the ending of Succession showed that Roman, above anyone else, might be capable of breaking out of that cage. That bittersweet smile about leaving it all behind? He’s going through it right now but he’s clearly wanted a way out for a long time. (see more Tabitha/Roman hc at the end, moving on to other spoilers!)

Roman’s watch. 😈 so i have committed a crime against you all which I will now reveal, because it’s too delicious to wait for the next story:

there is no tracker in Roman’s watch.

yeah. Mencken had it repaired and didn’t replace the tracker. he already has the app in Roman’s phone, he figures, so it’s unnecessary (he’ll have fun figuring that out later). but in his own head, Mencken thinks he’s basically got Roman back and he won’t be needing it anymore with Roman taking a job in the White House and Mencken not traveling as much. So when Mencken gave him the watch back… it wasn’t a trick or a creep move (for once). It was just about wanting Roman to have it 💔

Who was the person on the other end of the phone call? While technically none of your guesses were wrong about who will be returning… it’s Tabitha. He called Tabitha and invited her to London for this NYE party his mother is throwing. (Shiv will be there also)

What’s going to happen, besides Mencken losing it? I know I said spoilers already, but I’m going to try not give away everything. But there’s going to be Roman going to therapy (yay!) and Tabitha gently blackmailing him to be honest in said therapy (FINALLY), Roman thinking over what Caroline said to him, more scenes with Chloe, and also some dark fash stuff with Mencken entering the White House. (and to answer those questions; yes, Mencken will make it into the White House if it’s the last thing he does *ominous music begins*). I’m still toying with what Roman’s going to do, job/life-wise, potentially bringing Matsson back in, and what all of this means for Roman’s relationship with Shiv.

Do you have any of it written yet? I do have some scenes already. Summer ‘23 the first thing I wrote after the scene of Mencken and Roman in the martini bar in ‘after the end of the world’ was him finally having a real conversation with Tabitha. Then there’s some Chloe stuff, some Mencken stuff (where he is predictably so normal and chill), and today I started an Aiden-Dan scene off camera where they discuss their insane boss.

How does Mencken plan to have Roman in the White House, would he live there? Nope! Even Mencken’s audacity wouldn’t extend that far. He is likely envisioning that Roman would be like other senior staff, namely that Roman gets a security clearance and hard pass—this is important because otherwise, Roman would have to sign in and out of visitor logs and go through security every time he comes to the White House. I think we can all imagine why Mencken doesn’t want an official government record (which are also public) of what time Roman’s leaving the White House or how often he visits. That being said, I don’t think even Mencken thinks they’d be able to have sex there on a regular basis, way too many cameras, staff, and security. Not to mention his wife.

But Mencken also genuinely wants Roman as part of his administration. If he thought Roman was only good for sex, he wouldn’t bother buttering him up because they already have that arrangement. If he wanted to pay him off for the Election Night heist or the other things Roman’s done for him, he could give him a cushy ambassadorship to Brazil or Jamaica (most big-time donors are rewarded this way) or put him in charge of some bullshit committee. But Mencken was being honest; he thinks Roman is good at this and he wants him on his team.

Oval Office sex? What do you think I am, some kind of hater? (♥️) Of course there will be kinky Oval Office sex with both of them making gratuitous gross blue dress jokes. Mencken is such a freak; obvi transgressive sex in America’s most sacred room (to republicans) is a must.

What’s going to happen with Mencken and Roman, happy ending? I really don’t want to give away too much, but I think you can all assume how Mencken is going to feel about Roman going back to his ex. So! 🫠

For an ending overall… I’m really torn. Because most of me wants Mr. Fascist to die alone and miserable, just like Ayn Rand. But. Roman loves him. Maybe Roman should get the things he wants, for once. The hazy ending I’m imagining will have everyone (the characters) getting most of what they want if not all.

Will Mencken ever use the ‘L’ word with Roman? Ahh…🥺. So. this exact scene is maybe the third thing I wrote after the finale. I’ll try to answer without spoiling everything… yes and no. He’s been saying it to Roman for a while now. And when this comes up, Mencken addresses it head on. If that helps?

Will Connor start a war with Slovenia? Maybe!

Hope this is enough to soothe y’all for a while! (and fingers crossed it’s not too long)

The rest of my Tabitha/Roman hc:

The other reason for Tabitha returning is 1) she and Roman are still in contact through the end of s4 in the script books. I didn’t know this either until I read them last winter! 2) I just don’t care what people might say, I really think Roman liked her a lot. Like Roman has lesbians beat for U-Hauling speed; he brought her to his sister’s wedding after 4 dates, introduced her to his whole family, and proposed to Tabitha after a MONTH of knowing her. And while she says no, they’re living together when s2 opens. Also… I know this is controversial, sorry! but 2) both the sex things with Gerri happen directly after he fails to consummate a physical relationship with Tabitha. LOOK I also think he loved Gerri, but I just can’t believe he didn’t care about Tabitha, and probably loved her. Roman is kind of a love slut. And 3) let’s contrast his relationship with Grace and his relationship with Tabitha: Grace calls him a cheater at family thanksgiving and purposefully shows the kids the movie that (maybe?) ended his tenure in LA—and Roman dumps her. Not great, but did it have to be a dealbreaker? Whereas Tabitha calls them EUNUCH BESTIES in front of his father, which for Roman was almost bad as the dick pic debacle—and he doesn’t dump her or even appear to be angry with her. This man is in love with her.

I also believe it’s mutual. Tabitha seems very laissez faire and unbothered about life in general, I don’t think that’s an indication of her feelings about Roman. And here’s my biggest piece of evidence: does anyone think Tabitha isn’t doing whatever she wants all the time? If she didn’t want to be with Roman, she would have left. The tenderness in her voice when she says, “I am not uninterested in figuring you out,” 🥺♥️♥️. I think Roman’s refusal to communicate about any of his issues when she kept asking him to just got to be too much for her. But if Roman called her and was like, hey you were right, um, wanna hang out? I can see her giving him another shot.

So! Tabitha’s coming back. However, Tabitha’s not a doormat. While she’s clearly a kinky person without a lot of hangups (re: her entire introduction)... we’ll see how far that extends to the Mencken situation 👀 Because Mencken is not letting his man go without a fight.

[baelonthebrave]

your favourite succession character is dictated by the size of the overlap in the venn diagram of whatever is wrong with them and whatever is wrong with you

[justallthecolors]

of course the evil entity that is Raglan planned all this

[lighthouseweeper]

He scalped 500 tickets and by hook or by crook he’s going to get his money back

[femmecelworld]

Jkirk doing pure scum evil once again (yay)

[dajo42]

need a polite way to say "im not engaging in a discussion on this topic with you because the conclusions you have reached are based on so many interwoven layers of misconceptions it would be easier to just like, hard reset your whole brain, just start over as a baby and try again"

[femmecelworld]

life is beautiful when your heart is pure and full of whimsy!

[femmecelworld]

Anne Rice trying to let her dream of the gayest horniest Harley-revving mall rat gremlin vampires break through her Catholicism

[femmecelworld]

I can’t believe I have to share the earth with people who could watch this show and not be moved to tears

[femmecelworld]

It’s funny how the people who “hate” the show the most are watching new episodes within minutes of them leaking online. Interesting!

[femmecelworld]

oh my god PEOPLE REPORTED THE SHOW TO THE NAACP?!????! ARE WE BEING SERIOUS???!

[femmecelworld]

I can’t believe this is real. There are ‘fans’ emailing the NAACP about a vampire show to cancel it or get people fired. It’s so stupid it should be funny, but I honestly feel kind of sick. Jacob Anderson and Delainey Hayles have gone out of their way to talk about how much they love the show, how much they enjoy working with everyone, and specifically, how good the writing is. And these ‘fans’ are ignoring them and pretending they’re doing this destructive shit on their behalf—because Jacob and Delainey can’t speak for themselves? Because you don’t like or agree with what they’re saying so you’re going to speak over them? In the name of “allyship” you’re diminishing the work and creativity of Black actors?

These ‘fans’, their opinion of what Black stories should be really exposes their own prejudice. Trying to sanitize it to what they think is good or acceptable is racist. For the thousandth time, Jacob and Delainey have both talked about how important it is for Black characters to be written in so many different ways, for them to be allowed to be flawed and messy and complicated. And yeah, sometimes bad! Saying that the only Black characters allowed must be perfect and virtuous 100% of the time is patronizing, infantilizing, and deeply racist.

This small but vocal group of fans has reduced incredibly complex characters to stereotypes and the writers did not do that. THEY did that. They need to consider what they have in their own heads that made them look at these stories and see only racist stereotypes.

[femmecelworld]

oh my god PEOPLE REPORTED THE SHOW TO THE NAACP?!????! ARE WE BEING SERIOUS???!

[professorspork]

idk how to word this properly but wrt the fanfic thing you reblogged earlier. Why do fanfic writers have such different expectations than any other content hosting platform?

Like lets take youtube as a point of comparison, Engagement like comments and likes largely exists to boost the works place in algorithm, thats why youtubers put in calls to action and other engament bait. Few with decent reach even read the comments and the audience shouldnt try to develop any weird parasocial relationship with the youtuber. Fanfic authors ask for likes (kudos, because the websites gotta use nonstandard language for some reason) and comments despite them not having any impact on an algorithm, and seem to want the audience to try and develop a relationship with the author based on tumblr posts like that one.

Why the radical difference in behaviour away from the norm? And honestly with all the (usually) metaphorical blood spilled online about parasociality why are authors really surprised that the audience tries to keep their distance as is best practice with any other content producer?

okay I am going to answer this as kindly and as calmly as I can and try to assume that you are asking this in good faith. because my friend, the fact that you feel the need to ask is, to me, The Problem.

[this is, for the record, in response to this post]

fanfiction writers are not *posting content.* (I also have reservations about engaging with the term "content producer" or "content creator" but let's put that aside for now, I'll circle back to it.) you say "they seem to want the audience to try and develop a relationship with the author" as though it is strange, off-putting, and incomprehensible to you, when in fact that is the point of writing fanfiction. it is a way of participating in fandom. it is a way of building community and exchanging ideas and becoming closer with people.

if authors wanted to solely ~generate content~ that would get them attention (?? to what end, the dynamic you have described seems to equate algorithmic supremacy as winning for winning's sake, as though all anyone wants to do is BUILD an audience without ENGAGING with them, which I cannot fathom but let's pretend for a moment that is, in fact, true) then like. if that were the case why on earth would they choose a medium in which they categorically cannot succeed and profit, because it isn't their IP?

you are equating two things that are not at all the same thing. to the degree that parasocial relationships are to be avoided, and "that person is not trying to be your friend they are trying to entertain you, please respect their boundaries" is a real dynamic -- which it is!! -- like. you have to understand that the reason that is true for the people of whom it is true is because it is their JOB. they are storytellers by profession, and they are either through direct payment, or sponsorship, or advertising, or through some other means, profiting off of your attention. i don't say this to be dismissive, many wonderful artists and actors and comedians and any number of a thousand things that i enjoy very much go this route but they do so as a *career choice.* and so when you violate the public/private boundary with them, you are presuming to know a Person rather than their Worksona. the people who work at Dropout or who stream their actual play tabletop games or who broadcast on TikTok or YouTube are inviting me to feel like i know them to the degree to which that helps them succeed in their medium and at their craft, but there MUST be a mutual understanding that that's a feeling, not a fact.

however.

a fanfiction writer is not an influencer, not a professional, and is not looking to garner "success." there is no share of audience we are trying to gain for gain's sake, because we are not competition with one another, because there is nothing to win other than the pleasure of each other's company. we are doing this for no other reason than the love of the game; because we have things we want desperately to say about these worlds, these characters, these dynamics, and because we *want more than anything to know we are not alone in our thoughts and feelings.* fanfiction is a bid for interaction, engagement, attention, and consideration. it is not meant to be consumed and then moved on from because we are NOT paid for our work, nor do we want to be. the reward we seek is "attention," but attention as in CONVERSATION, not attention as in clicks. we are not IN this for profit, or for number-go-up. there is no such thing: legally there cannot be. we are in this because we want to be seen and known.

like. please understand. i am now married to someone i met because of mutual comments on fanfiction. our close friend and roommate, with whom i have cohabitated for over a decade now, is someone I met because of mutual comments on fanfiction and livejournal posts. that is my household. beyond my household, the vast majority of my closest personal friends are people with whom I built relationships in this way.

you ask why fanfiction writers want THIS and not "the norm," but the idea of everything being built to cater to an algorithm to continue to build clout, as though the only method of reaching people is Distant Overlord Creator and Passive Receptive Audience being "the norm" is EXTREMELY NEW. this is not how it has always been!! please think of the writers of zines in a pre-internet fandom, using paper and glue and xerox to try and meet like-minded people in a world that was designed for you to only ever meet people in person, by happenstance, in your own hometown. imagine the writers of the early internet, building webrings from scratch to CREATE a community to find each other, despite distance. imagine livejournal groups, forums, and -- yes, indeed, of course -- comment threads IN STORIES -- as places where people go to *converse.* in the past, we had an entire Type Of Guy that everyone knew about, the BNF ("Big Name Fan") whose existence had to be described via meme because it was SO DIFFERENT THAN THE NORM. treating fellow fans like celebrities or people too cool for the regular kids to know was an OUTLIER, and one commonly understood to lead to toxicity.

in the past, I have likened writing fanfiction to echolocation. i am not screaming because I like hearing the sound of my own voice, though i can and do find my voice beautiful. i am screaming so that the vibrations can bounce back to me and show me the world. the purpose is in the feedback. otherwise it is just noise.

does this make any sense? can you see, when i describe it that way, why an ask like yours makes me feel despair, because it makes us all sound so horribly separate from one another?

perhaps I will try another metaphor:

a professional chef who runs a restaurant will not have her feelings hurt if you never fight your way into the kitchen to personally tell her how much you enjoyed the meal. that would, indeed, violate a boundary. professional kitchens are a place of work, and you have already showed her you enjoyed the meal by paying for it, or by perhaps spreading your enjoyment by word of mouth to your friends so they, too, can have good meals. you show your appreciation by continuing to come back. if a bunch of people sitting around randomly happen to have a conversation about how much they love the food, it wouldn't hurt that chef's feelings to not be included in the conversation. however: EVEN IN THIS INSTANCE, it is ADVISABLE AND APPROPRIATE to leave a good review! you might post about how much you like this restaurant on Yelp, and it would probably make the chef feel great to see those positive comments. but the chef doesn't NEED them, because the chef is, again, *also being paid to cook.* that's why she started the restaurant, to be paid to cook!

i am not being paid to cook.

i am at home in my own kitchen, making things for a community potluck where i hope everyone will bring something we can all enjoy together. some people at the potluck are better bakers, some better cooks; some can't cook at all but are great at logistics and make sure there's enough napkins for everyone; some people come just to enjoy the food, because that's what the party is for. and if I, as this enthusiast chef who made something from my heart for this reason alone, learned after the fact that a bunch of people got together in the parking lot to rave about my dish but no one of them had ever bothered to tell me while I sat alone at my table all night, occasionally seeing people come by to pick up a plate but never saying anything to me -- of course that would bother me, because I am not otherwise profiting off the labor I put in. this is not a bid to be paid, because if someone WERE to say "hey, great cake!! here's five bucks for a slice" i would say no, friend, that is not the point and give them the money back. i'm not trying to Get Mine. I am in it to see the look on your face. I'm in it so you can tell me what about it moved you, so that I can say back what moved me to make it in the first place. so we can TALK about it.

because what happened in the first place is this: one time I had a cake whose sweetness, richness, flavor, intensity, and composition moved me so much that I *taught myself to bake.* so I could see how much vanilla and sugar was too much, so I could learn how to make things rise instead of fall flat, so I could even better appreciate the original cake by seeing for myself the effort and talent and inspiration that goes into making one even half as good.

learning to do so is a satisfying accomplishment in and of itself, yes.

but I also did it because at the end of the day we should EAT the cake. and it's a lonely thing, to eat alone when a meal was always designed and intended to be shared.

so, to answer your last question: i'm not surprised, i'm just sad. because somehow two things that were never meant to be seen as the same have been labeled "content," and thus identical. and it diminishes both the things that ARE intended to be paid for AND the things that are not, because it removes any sense of intimacy or meaning from the work.

i hope you know i'm not mad at you for asking. but i'm frustrated we've come to live in a world where the question needs to be asked, because the answers are no longer intuitively obvious because we're so siloed.

[claumandscathedral]

genuinely open to disagreement but delainey’s pained delivery of “bleak… black life” felt like the anti-black insults she was hurling at louis were intentionally loaded with her own grief. especially with her comments that claudias jealous that louis gets to wallow and love and live.

louis gets to be black and desired, cherished and wanted with his whole personhood. louis gets to fuck up, be fucked up, forgive and be forgiven; he gets to be black and a whole person. claudia is disabled into helplessness by her little girl body that seems to keep signalling people to treat her like a boxed doll. its not a coincidence that she gets louis to plot against lestat by telling him he’s a kept thing, telling him he is all the things she experiences. the anger in her voice when she calls louis a slave, it feels situated against the incessant inertia she was always running on because she had no other choice.

in nola, its claudia micromanaging with an eye and ear on everyone. she nurses louis after the drop, she maintains the thread of their plotting. in europe, its claudia learning the languages, claudia keeping up the story, claudia maintaining hypervigillance. she notices the bombs about to blow while louis’ being woeful and hallucinating lestat. louis gets to be lost in lestats eyes; louis gets to dance with humans in romania; louis gets to run around paris ‘out on the streets’ while shrugging off armands warnings. louis gets to be careless, gets to be oblivious, gets to drown in his pain and still be protected and unconditionally loved. what louis couldnt even give her

the blackness claudia navigates her life with is so radically different from louis’ that it makes a lot of sense that she so ardently hates his

[femmecelworld]

while overall, the majority of the backlash to episode 6 was the typical watching with your eyes closed and zero critical thinking reaction that this genre of ‘fans’ has to everything, I’ve seen some good faith criticism as well.

multiple things can be true at once: nearly all of what Claudia said is exactly what she has said before. Claudia called herself and Louis slaves, called Lestat ‘massa’; and we are also meeting Claudia for the first time without the narration of Louis or Lestat and she has had 70 years to dwell on her torment and the injustice.

but something that’s bothered me since the Paris trial in 2024, that I attributed to Louis’ narration (and possible Armand edits), is why, in her last words, Claudia called the trial a “stoning” instead of what it really was, a lynching. Claudia has never shied away from calling out racial violence, and that’s what the trial was! a lynching! the coven set out to humiliate, torture, and murder the two Black vampires and they would’ve let Madeleine go. so why didn’t Claudia call it that? That line never sat right with me and felt slightly off in the scene—I always suspected that was intentional, a hint that the trial wasn’t what it appeared because Claudia wouldn’t have said that.

I think it’s likely they’ll revisit the trial in episode 7, because we haven’t seen a bit about it yet and Lestat has spent the whole season correcting the book and the gaps in narration. maybe then we’ll see the rest of the trial from Lestat’s memories. very curious to see post-finale interviews with the writers and cast.

[alethialia]

At a time when Netflix is getting roundly criticized for forcing its shows to treat the audience like we have all of two brain cells to rub together, The Vampire Lestat is out here volleying everything from 70s gay references to 1700s Dutch Republic references at the speed of light while saying, "You don't get it? Well, that's a fucking you problem."

And I love that for us.

[despazito]

[poll-position]

You are given a short-lived curse in which you have a song stuck in your head for a week. On the bright side, you get to pick the song. Which do you choose?

American Pie (Don Mclean)

Bad Romance (Lady Gaga)

Cotton Eye Joe (Rednex)

Bohemian Rhapsody (Queen)

Dancing Queen (ABBA)

Happy (Pharrell Williams)

Hot n Cold (Katy Perry)

Single Ladies (Beyonce)

Take Me Home Country Roads (John Denver)

Wannabe (Spice Girls)

We Didn’t Start The Fire (Billy Joel)

9 to 5 (Dolly Parton)

Voting ended onJul 16

[femmecelworld]

soooo about Claudia dying a violent death and restless spirits… 👀

way back when, i stopped reading the books after TVA, so no idea what happens in canon with Merrick and everything. but Claudia broke the salt circle?! Merrick ended the ritual by closing the connection to various spirits—not Claudia. not an expert on Voodoo spiritual practices but I think it’s very likely Claudia’s spirit was able to escape the summoning.

<gif here>

is Claudia coming back as a restless spirit/ghost? is she going to possess someone?

to me, what we learned about her spirit in ep6 suggests the lingering torment from her life has kept her tethered to this world and unable to find peace, specifically her anger at Louis and Lestat and everyone involved in the Paris trial. and that until she resolves those issues, she won’t be able to move on. very very interesting that she cannot find Madeleine!

<gif here>