m

m | 30's | she/they

[allgreekbitch]

ppl complaining bc we didn't get a loustat kiss... girl their moments in the last couple of episodes were so intimate i didn't even notice😭😭😭😭

[borninwinter81]

Sex and intimacy in TVL

@armandsbitchboy and I were discussing the lack of sex between the main "ships" this season, and how we both actually prefer non sexual intimacy - for me this was a huge draw of the books when I was first reading them as a teenager, as well as the way the characters can have sex without actually having it, via biting and blood drinking.

This made me start thinking about the way sex is shown in TVL as opposed to series 1 and 2.

For those first two seasons sex is generally shown on screen as a pleasant experience for all concerned. Unpleasant sexual encounters such as Claudia's repeated assaults by Bruce take place offscreen.

In TVL this dynamic is reversed. Every sexual encounter we are shown is rape (Magnus), abusive (Gabriella) or indifferent (the constant groupie sex that Lestat has). The only true intimate encounter we see, between Nicky and Lestat, has a cut away before anything really happens.

I would surmise that this is deliberate and speaks to the attitude of the respective narrators towards sexual intimacy. For Louis sex is associated with love, hence why he's hurt when Lestat wants other sexual partners. Even when he does have his own encounter with someone else immediately following this conversation, it's with someone he loved.

For Lestat sex is either traumatic, or it is utilised like a drug to numb his feelings of emptiness and loneliness, as he tells us in the song of the same name. BTW, it is not uncommon at all for people with a traumatic sexual history to become hypersexual as a coping mechanism, so these two things are not incongruent.

This leads me to the idea that perhaps for Lestat non-sexual intimacy with partners he actually loves may be more important to him. One of the reasons episode 6 was by far and away my favourite episode this season was because of how closely Lestat and Louis' relationship mirrored the dynamic of the books, and how intimate they were onscreen without even a kiss.

Another point I'd like to make regarding this: I've seen many in the fandom bemoaning the lack of sex scenes between intimate partners this season (Devils Minion, Lestat and Louis, Lestat and Nicky etc).

I would say that due to the way all the other sexual encounters are shown (violent, abusive or meaningless) it would be extremely difficult to frame an intimate sexual encounter as tender and emotional. Can you imagine showing Lestat and Nicky together in the same episode Lestat is raped by Magnus? Or Lestat and Louis getting back together in this way in the same episode that Gabriella's incestuous abuse is exposed? It would leave a really foul taste to the whole thing, and during episode 6 in particular I was really hoping nothing physical happened between Lestat and Louis for precisely that reason.

The performance of Brutal Love, the (unscripted!) hug in the street, their interaction at the bar, the conversation on the bench, did more to establish closeness than any "love scene" could have.

[collegeboysam]

daniel talking to louis: anytime i put drugs up my ass in the 80s i got so high off my gourd i dreamt of ghouls and goblins for a decade that's literally all i remember

louis: huh that's how drinking lestat blood's felt like as a human how peculiar armand pretending to be rashid in a lowcut across from them fully knowing in reality daniel was lovingly motorboating his tits in their private island in between doing blood-cocaine off his pristine vampire asscrack and having such extreme levels of cirque du soleil sex that it caused daniel's early hip replacement: does the old man want another martini

[knight-in-shimmering-armour]

Just saw an edit where the editor has juxtaposed louis saying "okay let's wake the boy up and let's try you" with older Daniel conducting his interview and... woah! Because they did wake the boy up. 49 years later, they woke the boy up and it obliterated their relationship. Wow.

[moondustinfj]

"So your name would always cradle...my heart."

[gargoylebones]

i feel like a lot of people don’t understand that Claudia’s defining trait as a character is the fact that she is a memory. she is a concept. i keep seeing people complain that “she was out of character in the seance scene” or that “she would never say that.” but you don’t know what she would say!! everything we know about Claudia is someone else’s interpretation of who she is—INCLUDING the seance scene, which is still in lestat’s perspective. even on the rare occasion when she does speak for herself, we’re still seeing her through someone else’s eyes. we will never know Claudia’s version of the story because she is dead.

[the-breath-in-air]

And it is so bonkers that people still don't get it given that so much of the seance scene is about her lamenting how much of her own story has been taken from her.

[alixirdevida]

he didnt need to be chosen, he needed to be nurtured

[alixirdevida]

brutal love

[horsefigureoftheday]

Horse figure of the day: Lisa Larson Stora Zoo Zebra

[claumandscathedral]

My Formal Apology to Rolin Jones. These + the name change being a marketing decision + saying daniels transformation will happen if they get another season + all the written significance for the value of 8 (supported by writing room tease) indicating the season got an episode lobbed off + the history of last minute changes + the gabimandstat scene being cut because it was ‘too important’ (list goes on): makes it pretty clear decisions were made in attempt to optimize the shows quality & longevity.

How do i balance a an honourable adaption with realistic limitations ie budget & time while being a strong tv show that ensures it gets renewed?

Do you try to do everything or go full force in the most marketable aspect (sexy sam reid), bait a larger audience, and weave long term story plots to demand another season?

Yeah it’s disappointing how little of the past was in the season. But I’m believing it was an intentional call made for the situation at hand and theres a lot of set up for mandatory revisiting. With good reason

[eab-art]

The loumand failmarriage only gets more insane with every reveal I'm actually obsessed with it. Like basically Louis was a kind of shitty boyfriend to Armand (wouldn't commit to being his companion, was still hung up on his ex who he killed and who he was hallucinating the whole time they were dating) and Armand responded to this proportionally by colluding with his coven to have him and his daughter and his daughter's girlfriend publicly executed, and he spent ages making all the fun little projector animations for it and probably had a whole mock trial aesthetic moodboard and everything. But then Louis' ex who ISN'T dead teams up with his ex to get revenge on his other ex who tried to kill him, but he changes his mind halfway through the trial and makes sure Louis survives, and both him and Louis get turbo trauma by seeing their daughter killed horribly in front of them. Then Louis is mad at BOTH of them, because he thinks Lestat is why Claudia got killed, and because he thinks Armand just stood by and let the trial happen, but he can't just be single because he's got turbo grief and also the best revenge on Lestat is fucking Lestat's ex, so they get married and IMMEDIATELY fucking hate each other. Louis never loved Armand and was only with him out of spite and out of grief. Armand is trapped in this insane lie that could fall apart at any moment; he chose his coven over Louis but then Louis fucking killed them all so he's stuck with Louis. And of course they're both miserable, and so Louis immediately starts fucking (and killing) other men - nearly 200 by the time he meets Daniel Molloy. And Armand initially takes out his repressed anger about this on Louis' new toy but then it turns out, huh, maybe this toy is actually kind of compelling? So whenever Louis cheats on him he goes and stalks Daniel Molloy for enrichment, and now they're BOTH in love with someone else while still pretending they're in love. And then that beaten up chew toy that keeps fucking up his life and fucking dubious twinks in cars is old and about to die so Louis invites him over to tell him his life's story/kill him finally/turn him?/sabotage his marriage for him, and Armand does sexy servant roleplay, and Louis offers to turn Daniel/have sex with him right in front of Armand who is deeply in love with him, and Armand tries to gaslight him back and puts the Steins in with his photographs. And then it turns out that shitty old man is actually a decent reporter and the marriage unravels and they're both FREE but this is very much not actually good for either of them or for society at large!

Oh and during ALL OF THIS they were fucking like crazy doing extremely not sane and safe BDSM.

[shadowen]

This is an anti-despair checkpoint! You must share something you're looking forward to before scrolling on.

[treasurecryland]

‘The Vampire Lestat’ Boss Addresses Lestat's Trial Intentions

Rolin Jones answers a burning question from fans.

lol ok so he did participate willingly

[treasurecryland]

Lestat fans really freaking out on twitter

[professional-rat-eater]

They just lost one of their biggest talking points lmao. I’m relieved it’s gone though because it’s easily the worst part of TVL. Just a little upset too though because it’s in a series of events that lead to Lestat punting Armand off a roof like a football and he vanishes into the night and it makes me laugh so hard every time I read it.

Why does he hate Armand so much though? I’m so curious, because the trial was the thing he was bringing up against him. There has to be more there. A little anger makes sense, but this level is just weird.

[arcadianambivalence]

He hates Armand for Nicki. Armand kidnapped Nicki and the coven fed on him, so Lestat lied about his wounds to Nicki during his recovery, but Nicki remembered enough of what he witnessed to guess at the truth, so Lestat gaslit Nicki and further widened the rift in their relationship, then he turned Nicki and preserved Nicki’s feverish state of feeling unloved and unbelieved, then out of regret for killing/turning Nicki, curiosity about vampirism, and pity for Armand, he started an affair with Armand, which only fueled Nicki’s insecurities and obsessions to the point of self harm, then instead of talking Nicki back from the ledge like Lestat tried and failed to do, Armand believed that Nicki’s mental state was irreversible and killed him in a way that triggered Lestat’s trauma over the witches, forever linking his distraught emotions about the two events.

He hates Armand because he can’t acknowledge that he hates himself for pushing Nicki over the edge. He finds it easier to blame Armand for setting off this line of dominoes that ended with Nicki’s death than to sit with the fact that there was no singular reason for Nicki’s demise. He does the same with Magnus, attributing the attack to something he can handle, that Magnus was just an obsessed fan. He does the same with Claudia in season 1, attributing the problems in his relationship with Louis to Claudia and Claudia alone. When Armand found his voice among the many in 1973 and told him about Louis’s attempt to walk into daylight, Lestat probably thought Armand was behind it and spent decades stewing in that suspicion, grief, and rage. He apparently doesn’t know that Armand gave Louis the opportunity to give proof of life and Louis refused.

Over and over again, he finds reasons to blame Armand for his pain. Nicki’s downward spiral. Claudia’s death. Louis’s self harm. He doesn’t know or care enough to question Marius’s assessment of Armand as a rotten boy. Doesn’t even seem to wonder why Armand was so adamant in his belief that Marius was dead. And in Lestat’s defense, Armand doesn’t do much to persuade him otherwise…at least that we’ve seen.

Factor in The Queen of the Damned plot, in which Armand is not in favor of Akasha’s plan that Lestat is pressured into carrying out while having enough autonomy to refuse but is too afraid to (cough) like Armand in the trial (cough), and Lestat has a major reason to want to avoid admitting to the things he is responsible for.

So what does he usually do when confronted with things going spectacularly wrong? The same thing he’s done for centuries. Blame someone else. Armand must have set off this new line of dominoes that did more damage than Lestat waking the Queen. Because how else could anyone cope with the responsibility of abetting the near destruction of mankind?

To end on a real-world note, I read that AMC told them they didn’t have the budget for the original ending (one closer to the book) when they were halfway through completing production, so they had to scramble to rework things to give the season something of an ending. I wonder if this question would have been answered onscreen in the original ending episode(s), but the last-minute changes meant the writers had to push it to next season, and Rollin said this in the interview to put that question to bed once and for all among fans who take interviews as canon.

I think a lot of the questions this season left unanswered can be pinned on the studio’s budgetary restrictions. Or at least, I’m willing to blame them on studio interference just like Lestat blames things on Armand and Claudia until proven otherwise!

[angkis]

[misodraws45]

he’s kicking his feet giggling about his zone two girly with a grifters resume

[yaoiblackmold]

Not sure if anyone noticed this yet but in the final scene where we see the destroyed city there's a little graffiti at the bottom right that says "She is the answer" probably referencing Akasha

[claumandscathedral]

Delainey Hayles on what shes learned about claudia:

“Audiences love multi-faceted characters but when they talk about claudia, they talk about how angry she is all the time, do not reduce her to that (…) shes’s actually full of love and extremely delicate”