★ is ealaín dubh í ★

22 | 🇮🇪 | following wherever my autism leads me

[glitteringpoet1685]

Cornelius Hickey and Jin Guangyao really exist in their own category of gay villain that is having a smile so evilly beautiful that I almost forgive them.

[heartetcoeur]

Dan Simmons must have been on the purest bullshit ever when he created Hickey. Did he realize he was creating the bad guy of all time. Did he realize the girls would froth at the mouth for him.

[amygdalae]

I absolutely adore dogs but I think dog haters are (usually) more justified than cat haters wrt their reasoning

[amygdalae]

your average cat hater: I don't like how they r bitchy and ignore me/ won't let me manhandle them

your average dog hater: I have been mortally endangered by an ill-trained dog

[finalhorsegirl]

it's so difficult to get people into The Terror because, in my opinion, you really have to watch it *at least* twice to get the full experience... like every little detail is a setup for something that happens later, and you don't realize how insane it was at the time until the payoff five episodes later. and then you rewatch and you get to be like Oh My God... That's Why He Did That... and you really have to really lock in when you watch it, like some of the best parts of the show just happen silently and aren't addressed out loud by anyone. also you may need a spreadsheet for characters because there are like 30 unique character arcs happening

[dedicatedfolloweroffashion]

Has someone already done this?

[konoko]

[charlestrask]

sexual thrill at the mere prospect of cataloging things in a database

[coffeeeandbaileys]

[satyriconmp3]

admire folks who reblog posts which contradict eachother. exactly! keep em guessing

[txttletale]

When you deride or decry a piece of media, then, do you not consider that to be a call to action to your followers to avoid it and its fans? I kind of thought that was the subtext of all of this

unfortunately you have had your ability to understand media criticism crushed into a fine powder by decades old steven universe discourse

[txttletale]

i say this a lot, but it's always really striking how many people assume that like, criticism necessarily comes from a place of moral outrage and personal vitriol, and that therefore when i make a comment about something's political positions i'm "fighting a fight" against it. i literally just enjoy thinking about art and verbalizing those thoughts is useful in organizing and refining them

[coldeveryseason]

i've seen a lot of people defend the increase in uncritical antiblackness and racist scripts in tvl/s3 by saying "well lestat and daniel are racist white men, ofc they make racist comments" and it's like, well yeah that's true but they shouldn't be making racist comments with the exact same voice and with seemingly the exact same pov. lestat is a french aristocrat from the late 18th century who grew up in a rural backwater and then moved to paris at the height of the french revolution, during the enlightenment when many modern ideas of "whiteness" were being defined, lived in new orleans during the jim crow regime in the early 20th century and then was significantly isolated from human society until 2022- daniel is an american man (possibly of jewish or armenian heritage since he's played by luke and eric) who grew up middle class in modesto california (a small city that had a significant population increase during the post-wwii baby boom) in the late 20th century and spent most of his adulthood in liberal urban centers around the states. there's little to no overlap in their lived experiences- lestat was in his shack era for the vast majority of daniel's lifetime. they come from radically different cultural contexts and even though they would both have racist views that fit the norms of white supremacist society, they wouldn't have the same racist views or express their racism in the same way.

but the show has both of them speaking in the same irreverent, quippy voice and cycling through the same types of jokes in a way that makes it clear this is what the writers think is funny, that this is a reflection of the writers' (esp rolin's) racism. rolin said the audience was gonna feel the whiplash of the show suddenly being taken over by lestat and feeling like we're in lestat's head, but the tone shift fails bc it specifically doesn't feel like we're in lestat's head or that the kind of narration and dialogue we're immersed in reflects lestat's character in any meaningful way- instead, it feels like rolin has taken the fact that the show is now set mostly in the present day and the general premise of "lestat is chaotic and terminally online" as a free pass to use lestat as a mouthpiece for his own voice and sense of humor. lestat isn't just any random mid-30s rockstar edgelord on tour, he's a specific character with a specific background, and while it's believable that he became terminally online and obsessed with pop culture in the 3 years since he reunited with louis in s2ep8, that doesn't mean all traces of his past and the history that shaped him is gonna vanish from the way he speaks, narrates and views other people.

for a season that's meant to be all about digging into lestat's character and everything that made him who and what he is, the writers seem to have completely disregarded that when shaping lestat's voice this season- and why "oh well aren't they supposed to be racist white guys anyway" isn't an excuse for the racism we're seeing in the scripts. (and honestly even daniel's voice, even though his context is a lot closer to the context the show's writers would have, doesn't always land right- a man who spent most of the 70s/80s in gay bars wouldn't be calling a 6 ft tall beefcake a "twink" and his septuagenarian ass wouldn't have adopted the 2020s derogatory use of the term where people use "twink" as a substitute for "fag" either. he'd just say fag.) if the writers had done more research and had lestat doing archaic 18th-century racism pulls while contrasting that with his misuse of 2020s slang he doesn't fully understand, if daniel was actually speaking like a white guy who survived the aids crisis and cut his teeth as a journalist in late 20th century good-ol-boy newsrooms, i could give the show more grace and say there was some intentionality behind their dialogue- but everything so far just points to the writers themselves thinking "so armand is an abused sub bottom, that's his defining trait" and shoving dialogue about that into every other character's mouth without thinking if that specific person would actually say or think that. there's no reason a 265 yo french former rural aristocrat, a 72-yo usamerican journalist, and a 20-something french-canadian bookseller should be making the same kind of "armand is a beta bottom lawl" comment- but they are doing that in the show, bc the writers think it's funny and expect the audience to laugh along with them.

[glitteringpoet1685]

People will call you a Lestat hater for *checks notes* wanting to see the book that's meant to humanise Lestat be properly adapted

[dykesynthezoid]

The more we get of this season the more I feel like they weren’t actually that focused on adapting TVL and honestly somewhat saw it as an obstacle to get to QOTD. Yeah they’re interested in the rockstar stuff but even that is linked to QOTD and Lestat waking up Akasha.

I don’t think they were really interested in the bulk of what TVL was about or what it had to say, or even more than that, the quality it had as a book. Some of the content is there in the show, but the book does not actually match the show tonally, as much as people have tried to defend the show’s tone shift as being a product of the shift from IWTV to TVL. Book Lestat wants to share his history, he wants to be understood, he cares about that. He’s certainly not this reticent person intent on obfuscation.

And like idk maybe there’s hope in the fact that if they’re so excited to get to QOTD, the quality might be better next season bc it’s what they’ve actually really been wanting to explore. But it is frustrating, especially after Rolin made a show of carrying that damn book around all the time.

[dykesynthezoid]

Also real talk it annoys tf outta me sometimes when ppl are like “what did you expect of course Lestat’s narration isn’t like Louis’s, all flowery and morose, of course it’s hyperactive and meaningless” as if Lestat doesn’t wax poetic for pages and pages and pages in TVL about aesthetics, philosophy, history, existential quandaries, his own fear of death and the unknown, etc. He is in fact very flowery and morose. Fuck you??? Like tbh fuck you??? Read the book again???

[dykesynthezoid]

Camp is self aware but what season 3 is doing isn’t camp. If anything it’s become too self aware, too constantly aware of its audience to perform true camp. It hampers itself, second guesses itself, spotlights its own insecurities. It’s so self conscious, so concerned with the audience’s reaction— both in pleasing and disgusting them— that the performance cannot support its own scaffolding. It buckles under its own weight. The center doesn’t hold. When they write season 4 they need to be locked in a remote cabin with no internet and have their phones confiscated. It’s simply the only way forward after this

[ohwolfling]

From the day they revealed Assad was Armand, I thought, "God, I really hope one day they utilize this actor by having him read a long list of exposition. I sure hope they never give me scenes. I don't want to see a second of this guy's backstory! I hope I never see the actor embody this character at different times, in different places, with varied challenges. I sure hope he reads a list of stuff that happened."