[lestatrocks]

louis smiling and confirming to regina that hes gay is so funny to me.... no no i didnt want SEX oh god, you mustve thought i was so creepy haha. Noooo omg i want you to act like my dead vampire daughter who was also a stand in for my humam sister who died believing me to be a monster. which i am.

[crithir]

[poorly-drawn-mdzs]

What was in the blood.

[First] Prev <–-> Next

[cappucosmic]

Many uncles, but one Uncle

[knighteirian]

Armand & Daniel Molloy via AMC+ An Inside Look at The Vampire Lestat (2026)

[feyrischan]

What the fuck did you just fucking dare say about me, you little cutsleeve? I’ll have you know I graduated top of my sect in the cloud recesses, and I’ve been involved in numerous secret raids in the sunshot campaign, and I have tortured over 300 demonic cultivators. I am trained in uncle warfare and I’m the top leader in the entire Yunmeng armed forces. You are nothing to me but just another frog in a well. I will whip you the fuck out with precision the likes of which has never been seen before in the mortal realm, mark my fucking words. You think you can get away with saying that shit to me at the annual conference? Think again, impudent. As we speak I am contacting my secret network of spies across China and your clan's location is being traced right now so you better prepare for the storm, maggot. The storm that wipes out the pathetic little thing you call your core. You're the mantis that stalks the cicada, unaware of the oriole behind, fucker. I can be anywhere, anytime, and I can break your legs in over seven hundred ways, and that’s just with my bare hands. Not only am I extensively trained in martial art, but I have access to the entire arsenal of the yiling laozu fierce corpses and I will use it to its full extent to fuck your ancestors to the eighteenth generation, you little shit. If only you could have known what unholy retribution your little “clever” comment about my nephew was about to bring down upon you, maybe you would have held your fucking tongue. But you couldn’t, you didn’t, and now you’re courting death, you dog fucked idiot. I will shit fury all over you until you don't know whether to laugh or cry. You’re fucking dead, sect leader Yao

[crithir]

Imagine watching The Untamed with a dacryphilia kink

[hehearse]

[waningrivulet]

Yellowjackets seems very preoccupied with the experiences of teen girl youth and I think chief among those is the mythological concept of the "best friend." Everyone is expected to have One person, there's this presumption of monogamy both platonically and romantically that is explored heavily throughout the show. It's one of the more fascinating uses of cannibalism particularly in the first season where we see less literal cannibalism and more metaphorical cannibalism. IMO doomcoming is really about the metaphorical simultaneous preservation and destruction of that system

The framework of a school dance falls into that amatonormative expectation of monogamy, first and foremost. Even so far separated from civilization they continue to cling to the frameworks of what they used to know, which is another repeating motif -- they are still very much teenage girls and they are still grounded to the high school system they grew up in.

"I don't know where you end and I begin" is very much the problem of jackieshauna's relationship. They do not have an identity aside from each other and their relationship is so heavily built on the foundation of a "best friendship" that likely started before they even had personalities that it causes genuine confusion with their own identities. They are enmeshed. Permeability of the soul. And Jackie's actions during doomcoming are very much a response to that! She is betrayed by her "best friend" so she looks for substitution in a romantic partner, succumbing to heteronormativity. Lottie responds to this by literally saying Travis "doesn't belong to [her]," sexually assaulting him, and locking her in the closet. And Shauna joins in on this, rejecting Jackie's attempt to "claim" Travis. It reworks the relationship hierarchy to devalue monogamous romantic relationships, turning Travis not into a prize to be won but a resource to be divided up. But even though this turns away from monogamy there is still the expectation of heteronormativity and amatonormativity, just without exclusivity. Travis is still objectified and viewed as a piece of meat, just one to be rationed and shared between a Group rather than as something to belong to an Individual.

Likewise, Lottie's role as the primary instigator is born of her grief at losing her other half, like a twisted mirror of Jackie. She had one brief moment of having a "best friend" in Laura Lee and it was immediately taken from her. It's a rejection of the very system that hurt her. She and Jackie come from similar backgrounds of being simultaneously privileged but repressed by circumstance. A feeling of entitlement drives both of their actions here but Lottie uses it to violently break free while Jackie's frustration remains more internal (in the closet she's locked in).

Tai and Van, while complicit, are able to walk away from Travis's assault on account of 1) maintaining a "best friend" dynamic, but also allowing it to be inherently queer -- they are not desperate for the resource that Travis represents, because they have deviated from the amatonormative desire to have one perfect platonic partner and one perfect romantic partner. They complete each other and can remain comfortable, they aren't threatened by Lottie's new regime so there is no reason to interfere the way Jackie and Nat do.

Misty on the other hand has never had anyone even close to a best friend, and because of her inability to conform is already prone to meshing the platonic and the romantic. Her first shred of anything even remotely resembling "affection" comes from Ben so naturally she reads into it as romantic, and her frustration with the conventions of romantic vs platonic (in the form of Ben refusing to act on the feelings he claims to have for her). Spiking the stew is her own way of rejecting the status quo, similar to Lottie, only with less direct action. She just initiates a change and observes how the group's social structure reacts.

And Nat doesn't have the same privilege as Lottie and Jackie, but she's less entrenched in convention and is more of a free-thinker. She's able to intervene because her moral code is not the result of being forced to conform but rather a deliberate choice from her. She's not always moral but she has convictions that are her own and not the result of groupthink.

[iphigeniacomplex]

stephen king was right when he wrote about mr keene at the derry pharmacy selling sonia kaspbrak tap water aspirators because he knew she was overmedicating her son but did not want to "make himself a party to the woman's foolishness" and he was right when he wrote about mrs dumont, the former teacher of a boy believed to have been murdered by his abusive stepfather, being told by the entire school system not to report the child's injuries, because "suspected child abuse [...] always comes back to haunt the school department at tax appropriation time" and he was right when he wrote about mike hanlon researching the history of his town and finding a culture of silence surrounding each discovered terror ("...and yet that—what shall i call it?—that quiet fits the pattern, too.") and he was right when he wrote about the creator of the universe providing counsel but no real help in the face of it all. and he was right because there will always be another adult in the room, but this is no guarantee that the child will be saved.

[iphigeniacomplex]

"Beverly, do you remember, when we were kids, the man who just folded his newspaper and went inside his house while you were screaming at him for help?"

Chapter 10, The Reunion

A truck went by, headed for Route 2, the driver working his way up through the gears, and it crossed Eddie's desperate, terrified mind that he could be drinking coffee from a paper cup and listening to a Buddy Holly tune on the radio, completely unaware that less than two hundred yards away there was a boy who might be dead in another twenty seconds.

Chapter 6, One of the Missing: A Tale from the Summer of '58

A car came slowly toward them. It was a dusty '51 Ford with an old man and woman propped up in the front seat like a pair of neglected department store mannequins. Ben saw the old man's head turn slowly toward him. Henry stepped closer to Ben, hiding the knife. [...] "Go ahead, yell," Henry said. "You'll be pickin your fuckin guts off your sneakers." [...] The car passed and continued on down Kansas Street, as slow and serene as the pace car in the Tournament of Roses Parade.

Chapter 4, Ben Hanscom Takes a Fall

"When he died it never crossed my mind to think it was anything but an accident. [...] Now I think I just couldn't believe an adult could do such a thing to a little person. I know better now. I wish to God I didn't."

Chapter 6, One of the Missing: A Tale from the Summer of '58

The bathroom is full of blood, Daddy! she almost screamed then. Didn't you see it? It's everywhere! Cooking onto the light over the sink, even! Didn't you SEE it?

Chapter 9, Cleaning Up

"I get the idea, all right," Ben said. "Something's going on here, but it's private."

Chapter 10, The Reunion

[dramatic-dolphin]

sometimes it genuinely feels like other people don't remember being children. "omg if a 13 year old is looking at porn there is something deeply wrong 😨 they shouldn't even be thinking about sex!!" they are going through puberty and their hormones are going crazy. do you remember being 13 years old.

[justsomeguycore]

its sad that we make fun of the midlife crisis. if you’re in the midst of your adulthood and you find you hate what you’ve become and want to blow it all up you should just do that.

[namelessvoid77]

ever since i finished pluribus i cannottttttt stop thinking about carol's eggs being used to develop a way to join her. this choice she made directly tied to her reproductive health, directly tied to her lesbianism being so grossly taken advantage of to do something so expressly against her wishes. their violation of her consent by using her eggs because of their "biological imperative" to assimilate the population. it was kinda shocking to me to learn that this show was originally conceived with a male protagonist in mind because that's such a clever point of commentary on how choice surrounding reproductive rights is consistently stripped away under the guise of "biological purpose" or "the betterment of humanity" or similar reasoning. they respect consent when it comes to taking stem cells via a hip injection, but not when it comes to using her frozen eggs, something tied to an incredibly personal choice she made with her dead wife that they killed. they're not willing to kill any living thing, including plant life, but they are willing to use a lesbian's reproductive health to directly go against her wishes for individuality. it's fucking sickening. it's amazing writing. holy shit i love this show.

[violentdevotion]

don't attribute to stupidity what a man absolutely did out of malice

[violentdevotion]

'he didn't know any better' not true. he did. he was being cruel on purpose

[highonlife22-deactivated2026021]

exactlyyyyy I've always said this

[asneakyfox]

western media reviewing pluribus: in the collectivist cultures of The East, which place no value on individuality, the hivemind would not be understood as horrific uniformity but as a vision of harmony. the genius of the show is in gradually making us realize carol's resistance to the diverse and global hive is grounded in her ideological corruption by individualist capitalism and privileged position as an american white woman. i am very smart.

the japanese and chinese reviews i just looked up in like five minutes with google translate: the insidious hive is an obvious metaphor for western cultural imperialism and its determination to erase global diversity. love the subversion of making this english-speaking white person a victim of metaphorical colonialism for once, the shoe's on the other foot now huh carol? bit too on the nose to name the show after a latin word written on american dollars though

[nevermind-i-forgot-whats-that-d]

Something that bothers me about a lot of interpretations of Carol is that people view her as a giant loser of a person? And I don’t see that reading, even beyond the obvious which is that to be a best-selling author, regardless of subject matter, she has talent, imagination, and the ability to know what her audience wants. She also managed to maintain a long-term partnership with Helen, which meant that they had both worked out what dynamics between them could be tolerated, what reconciliation looked like, affection, friendship, emotional/mental needs, etc. Helen would not have put up with Carol’s ass for that long if there wasn’t some truly lovely things underneath the anger, substance use, and curmudgeony ways. Warning for a rambling character analysis because I have so many thoughts:

We see her lose her partner, her rock and anchor point, in such a traumatic way and then have to deal with an apocalypse on top of that in the span of maybe 2 months? Kudos to her for lasting even that long because if my partner died in front of me like that, even without the end of the world, I’d also be considering trial by fire(work) if you catch my drift.

And yes, Carol’s not overly concerned with niceties and can come off as a mean drunk, but who wouldn’t? There’s a quote that basically says when the whole world is blind, the man who can see is called crazy. And that’s her perspective - for some reason, nobody is as alarmed as she is and she can’t figure out why. She feels like she’s the only person who can see how bad things are (because, to be fair, she’s had the worst go of it).

She didn’t want the translators because she didn’t know at the time that the Hive couldn’t lie and didn’t trust them to not manipulate her words, not because she’s inherently racist. It’s crazy that people are upset with Carol for not considering the feelings of the other survivors when hardly any of them considered her. What she was going through? Why was she the way she was? How could you blame her for being angry and inadvertently causing deaths from that anger when she didn’t know that would happen? Did anyone ask her why she was so angry and haunted? (Anger is one of our foundational emotions, btw. I think it’s very deliberate that they wrote a situation where her anger is essentially policed.)

Carol is someone who values truth, choice, and agency, things that have all been denied to her at some point in her life, which in part fuels her misery and discontent.

And I think, something that gets lost, is that Carol cares. She cares about her fans (even though she pokes fun at them) through her actions. She kept the crocheted items, she interacted with them so beautifully during the book-signing, she remembered some of their usernames/details. Carol shows through her actions that she cares. She goes on the trips with Helen despite not wanting to because it mattered to Helen. She throws up and feels so obviously remorseful every time she loses her temper. She cares so deeply about the Others because they’re people and their freedom/choice/individuality was stripped of them without consent, which is something that’s obviously important to her given how she views Koumba’s actions. The Others’ lack of want, desire, agency, etc. is clearly upsetting to her.

Furthermore, post-isolation, she gets a lot of flak for breaking down and sleeping with Zosia as if the Hive was not purposefully manipulating her toward this end, playing on her need for connection to foster dependence. Zosia initiated the kiss. It was maybe one of the few times we see Zosia take an action that she didn’t ask for consent for first, didn’t wait for Carol to tell her, etc. Hell, it even had me questioning if that was a moment of agency. A sign of want. Something that would matter to Carol.

I tell people all the time that social connection and love are both up there with food, water, and shelter in terms of basic human needs. The person deprived of them has a hard time accessing their higher thoughts/self-actualization traits. It’s one of the main reasons many places are starting to look at solitary confinement as cruel and unusual punishment. The damage done to our psyches in the presence of loneliness isn’t just mental; physically speaking, prolonged loneliness causes issues in our bodies too.

Like yes, at the end of 40 days of essentially solitary confinement, she trips up, but we see that caring nature deep inside her when she starts asking Zosia questions about herself, and ensuring that she eats too, etc. Carol cares about people even if she is gruff about it. Even if she knows, in this context, it is going to be used against her.

Like in a way Carol and the Hive both have something the other is missing, and her inability to be placated for very long because of how strongly she values choice and autonomy and agency is something I think that draws the Hive to her in a unique way. Carol’s individualism and original experiences is fascinating to the Hive; the Hive’s connection and community is something Carol has always wanted but could never have.

When you think about it, Carol has lived her entire life feeling that some of her agency and choice have been taken from her. She is closeted, essentially, because she fears that being her authentic self will cost her the life she was come to enjoy and the comfort of it. She lost her family/lost the illusion of them loving her unconditionally over her sexuality, and that kind of betrayal from them is enough to have her guard up with everyone else. I think that’s why the idea of agency and consent rings so true to her core motivations. I think it’s different than just “oh she’s an American, of course she values individualism.”

Maybe I’m too close to the subject matter to see it, but I grew up in a southern US town and still live in the “Bible Belt.” I’m fortunate that I didn’t have to come out until I was out of the house and less dependent on my parents. The fear of conversion therapy was there for me, albeit more as a nebulous, vague idea like Hell, but it is still there for some in a far more tangible way.

And besides, even if you aren’t sent to a conversion camp, you’re often disowned or you’re socially ostracized. It’s honestly so similar to the Hive. You are different from these people and you both know it; they wave at you and smile but you have your guard up because you know deep down, if they could, they would change you. They would make you like them.

And the mother stuff, don’t even get me started. Carol specifically mentions her mother for a reason. I can understand why Carol is so bitter, why she assumes the worst: why wouldn’t she? Why wouldn’t she assume the worst when the one person in the whole world who is supposed to love you unconditionally (your mother) doesn’t love you? Or doesn’t love you unconditionally, at least.

So, long-winded, but it’s her empathy, her caring nature, her core fundamental love of humanity, that pushes her to resist the Hive so much. Because she doesn’t want to see what happened to her happen to billions of others. Let them have the choice, because Carol knows what it’s like when you don’t. When people try and take that away from you. When you live a life miserable because of how much of yourself you have to hide from the world.

Carol is deeply empathic person at her core. She’s just also abrasive and not a “people” person. Those aren’t the core traits to her, though. She’s not just purely selfish, she’s reliving the worst thing she has ever experienced and she’s entirely alone after spending a long time having at least one person by her side who showed her that she wasn’t unlovable.

We have seen the trope over and over again of the hero almost losing the one person they loved the most and doing anything in their power to stop it. Carol did lose that person, and she’s having to figure out how to cope with that.

TLDR: I think Carol deserves some grace because at her core, she’s an empathetic and caring person.

And also I love her so much. That’s it.