but wasn't it so for mortal fathers? @mortalfathers - Tumblr Blog

All the vampire chronicles books (both Epub and PDF versions)

Edit: I added in audiobooks files!

26 files

every couple of years there's a new superhero movie that will have many people telling you "no I know marvel is bad but this one is different, it's really good!" stay vigilant. it's gonna be bad

coolmugsifound

"Unicorn" Sanie Ceramics mug (1981)

source

cornbelt

snoopyfloyd

When u understand why a song is a classic because u listen to it

#hi bob

changed my user AGAIN but i promise i will keep it for a bit this time..

#my promise to you is never to change my pfp

daughtervampire

The way this show has handled Claudia's sexual assault is genuinely one of the most egregious examples of misogynistic writing I’ve seen in a female character.

Claudia has been dead for three seasons, and they have somehow managed to bring her rape storyline back in 3/3 of those seasons. At this point: LET THIS PLOT DIE.

In season 1, I gave them the benefit of the doubt with the Bruce storyline. Maybe that was a mistake, but I had reasons:

First, I hadn’t read the book, so I didn’t know this was a change. I took what the show gave me at face value.

Second, they made the deliberate choice to keep the assault offscreen. The show explicitly framed this as a decision not to be exploitative or make a spectacle of the details of Claudia’s suffering. That was a choice I thought was genuinely good and gave me hope: they at least seemed to understand that a female character shouldn’t be reduced to an opportunity to depict her being raped.

But then season 2 happened, and this is where my goodwill really started to evaporate.

In 2x03, Claudia tells Louis about what happened, and the show essentially soft-retcons the storyline into something much more extensive. It wasn't just the one time assault we saw implied in season 1; now she was kidnapped and repeatedly tortured. There was basically no indication in season 1 that this was the backstory they were building toward, and to me it very clearly felt like a choice made for season 2 to make the material more severe in retrospect.

And I was already like: okay. So we're bringing this storyline back and retroactively making Claudia's experience of sexual violence significantly more horrific.

But I still tried to give them some credit because, at least, Claudia herself was the one telling Louis about it. It wasn't another person reading her diary or the audience being given a voyeuristic reconstruction of her trauma.

She was choosing to tell him, in her own words, because she trusted him. I could at least interpret that as Claudia reclaiming some agency over the story and finally being able to speak about it and move forward.

Then we got episode 6 and I understood the actual reason they made her mention it again.

Because apparently the only way these writers could conceive of a romantic relationship between two women was: have them bond over being sexually assaulted.

And Madeline's assault is even worse in terms of how the show depicts it. At this point it basically feels like: oh, here's a female character. Let's have her get raped on screen because thats what happens to women. We get the gratuitous, lingering shots of the attempted assault, Claudia intervenes and saves her, and that becomes the catalyst for their relationship.

The narrative logic is basically the same as the most tedious dark-romantasy trope imaginable: male love interest saves female character from being raped by some random bad guys → shes so grateful she falls in love → romance. Except they put it between two women and apparently expected that to make the trope less grotesque.

And to be clear, I am not saying anything about people who enjoy Claudia/Madeleine, nor do I particularly dislike Madeleine as a character. My problem is entirely with the writers' decision to develop their relationship this way and chosing sexual violence as a the narrative shortcut.

So by season 2, this was already becoming a pattern.

And then season 3 comes around and they bring Claudia's rape storyline back again.

It was finished in season 1. Then they revisited it in season 2, expanded it, retroactively made it worse, added another woman being sexually assaulted and then used that assault as a means for developing Claudia's romantic relationship.

I genuinely cannot think of many examples of a television show spending three entire seasons progressively fleshing out a dead female character's rape in more and more detail. How much do you have to hate your own female character to keep finding new ways to make her sexual trauma narratively relevant after she's been dead for years?

And don't even get me started on Bruce being brought back.

Sometimes a rapist living without facing consequences is actually the point. That is, unfortunately, the reality of sexual violence: perpetrators frequently do go on to live their lives without facing anything remotely resembling justice. That was a perfectly coherent place to leave the story.

He simply did not need to come back.

And the decision to have him change his name to Killer, the nickname Claudia gave him, is especially weird to me. It makes it seem like Claudia had this enormous, life-defining impact on his identity, like she fundamentally shaped his life and he carried this piece of her with him, when, from her perspective, he was a random man who violently victimized her.

Why are we giving the rapist that kind of narrative significance?

Why is the story so interested in making him into a character?

And there was absolutely no reason they needed to use that time on him. They could have explored Lestat's memories of Claudia instead. They could have given us a flashback about Claudia that was actually about Claudia, something he remembers about her that isn't her being sexually assaulted.

Instead we're talking about a man reading Claudia's diary including accounts of her sexual assault out loud to her rapist as he kills him as some sort of heroic power fantasy of righteous vengence. And dont say "that's the point! it's supposed to be hollow and meaningless!" But its also supposed to be lesdaughter pararells so which is it?

Are the writers actually critiquing the voyeuristic misogynistic consumption of her trauma? Or are they just repeatedly doing exactly that, reconstructing and revisiting this girl's rape long after she's dead to use it as material for men's emotional arcs?

At some point, you cannot keep saying "look how exploitative these characters are being with Claudia's story" as though that automatically means the show itself isn't benefiting from the exploitation. The writers are the ones choosing to put this material on screen. They are the ones deciding that Claudia's rape needs to be revisited again and that we need more details every season and that her private account of being assaulted needs to become a plot device.

It's not like they're returning to Claudia's trauma because they have some new thematic insight into sexual violence. They're just... bringing it back. Again. And again. And that's what makes it so fucking boring. The spectacle of her rape, and how the men feel about it in the most shallow basic way. This isn't some profound exploration of misogyny this is dull and uncreative writing. Please be serious

#tw sa

petaltexturedskies

There is a theory that watching unbearable stories about other people lost in grief and rage is good for you—may cleanse you of your darkness. Do you want to go down to the pits of yourself all alone? Not much. What if an actor could do it for you? Isn't that why they are called actors? They act for you. You sacrifice them to action. And this sacrifice is a mode of deepest intimacy of you with your own life.

Anne Carson, from Grief Lessons: Four Plays by Euripides; Tragedy: A Curious Art Form

lahumunh

i think part of the appeal of armand for louis - or part of the armand justifies his abuse - is that armand presents himself as rational and logical. this is in contrast to lestat’s outbursts, mood swings, physical violence, occasional unwillingness to engage in debate w louis (i put you on this earth) and the way he will set and break terms on a whim (as long as you come home to me). abuse is inherently irrational, and most abusers rely on being unpredictable as one of their main tactics of control. armand’s abuse of louis isn’t “logical” but he insists there is a reason behind everything that he does - because louis himself is unstable, illogical, prone to acting out, armand must step in and act for his own protection. armand can hold long theological conversations with louis, armand will not be physically violent or raise his voice (unless louis acted out in a way that forced his hand, of course). what armand is doing is reasonable, so louis not liking or resisting the different ways armand controls his life is actually evidence of louis' own hysteria. ties in to the conversation of the dubai penthouse as akin to an asylum and louis as an institutionalized patient

guiltfactory

i always prefer miserable cheating over a sweet polyamory resolution

glowcowboy

i love listening to music!!!!! #MyMusic #MyHeadphones

like at the end of the day they really had paul thank lestat for loving louis "the way he needed to be loved" and louis tell armand "my denial drove you to this" this really is the abuse apologia season

#tvl critical

rn-deliabusby

flickr

#minou :[

another thing about tvl is that it speaks to such a flat, liberal conception of racism… in tvl, racism only ever exists when people are trying to be racist & malicious (see: daniel’s fried chicken comment) which is a gross oversimplification of how racism presents irl & iwtv understood this at least somewhat. imo, daniel would not consider himself to be racist in seasons 1&2, in the same vein of many self-righteous american neoliberals. he has a very new york times/washington post flavour of bigotry. there’s a definite smugness when he speaks about the racial dynamics of loustat (“white master, black student, but equal in the quiet dark”) for example. he understands racism is bad but he’s snarky about it in a way that's dismissive & comes from an angle of moral superiority rather than empathy. hes still being racist!! that line IS a microagression. despite the veneer of sarcasm, he's still calling louis the "black student" to lestat’s "white master", like come on.. iwtv understood that daniel has biases and how to depict them. racism doesn’t just come in the form of bad person who hates poc.. “well-meaning” people who recognize racism is bad are just as capable of racism..

#tvl critical

imo another facet of tvl's (mis)treatment of armand is the lighting & colour grading of his scenes. like the lighting setup here shows a lack of consideration for photographing brown skin - it's as if they lit these scenes only with the white characters in mind.

compare to these screencaps from iwtv2 with similar environments/times of day.. notice how the lighting setup highlights assad's features and doesn't create large shadows that crush the details of his face.