[ratemybreakdown]

... ok I guess

[kosmogrl]

[dzumii]

girls yearn for popular media with a butch as a main character

[kaylmao]

idk i would personally rather give up access to certain products seasonally or locally than have people enslaved to give me the ability to have any product any place any time. i think i can go without tomatoes in january.

[kaylmao]

i truly do think that most people if confronted with it and pressed on it would agree. but it's comfortable to gain privileges from someone else's suffering, especially if you don't have to see that suffering directly.

[ambienne]

This tweet means a lot to me.

[ambienne]

It’s probably a really cool and good sign that this post I made in 2014 is going around again, right?

[pynkhues]

the flashback with the witches when Lestat was nine - the reveal being that his mother forced him to watch his friends burn to give him motivation to leave home - I don't know if I got the punch the writers intended?

curious now if there's more to it and the girls saw his mother being inappropriate with him? didn't he start stuttering when he was nine?

loved how Lestat started to stand up to Sofia from ep6 onwards.

It's a really dense scene, but I actually think the little girls dying aren't intended to be the punch, it's the first woman, Marguerite, who's burned for being raped by her father:

It's implied there that the mother murdered the father for it, but also turned her daughter forwards, blaming her for the violence of the father. I think in that sense, the girls are a means to underscore Marguerite's death and elevate the message Gabi intends (and we can definitely debate why she intends it, because I think her intentionality is deliberately oblique) - his age won't save him, and to speak is to burn, to be punished. The monks say confession will save these women, and it's actually Augustin who says that they have confessed, yet nobody will let them free of the pyre. Their fate is sealed, they have been tried in the court of public and divine opinion, and it's not crimes that see them killed, but the violence they too briefly were able to survive.

This moment is formative because it becomes the foundation of Lestat's understanding of his own abuse - the monks say Margueritte seduced her father and Gabi effectively affirms it. Anything that happens later is on him, he ceased his prayers, he put a spell on his mother, on Magnus ('if I had seen 19 straight performances of my Lelio, I would have abandoned all decorum too'), on Armand, on Larry, on all those who touch him without his consent, and to speak about it is to be punished. The thing about this season is that that's only been punctuated for Lestat - he tells Louis about Magnus and it ends up in the book, 3.03 ties the Magnus and Nicki chapters together and in doing so connects both beats to Daniel's subsequent witch hunt, culminating in the revenge porn, and, of course, the revenge porn itself - - all of these are about exposure and the ways victims are punished for speaking and surviving.

In that sense, the witches place scene and Lestat's emphasis on the girls while the writing itself actually leads with, and focuses on Margueritte is about how Gabi has groomed him into not just silence, but self-blame and the romanticisation of abuse (the father favouring his enchantress daughter means it was her fault, just like Magnus being a fan of Lestat's enchanting performance means what he did to him was his), but I think it's also about him still not entirely understanding it or Gabi at all. He's just able to start grappling with the idea that the little voice in him that tells him it's wrong might be one he can start listening to.

[identitty-dickruption]

choosing to allocate spoons to hanging out and having a good time at the cost of perfectly completing all your work is not a failing it is in fact an act of survival. “too sick to work = too sick to play” is in fact ableist bullshit that you don’t have to buy into. and the fact that leisure time is treated like a privilege is a fucking travesty

[snapscube]

I'm not a furry but I've been feeling like a bunny a lot more lately is it a sign I should make a bunny fursona or is it just my anxiety?

don't rely on interpretations of signs, you should do whatever harmless things you want for fun and then refuse to see it as a failure if you change your mind later

[echolaliaplayer]

*takes a drag of a candy cigarette* I never thought I would make it to this many

[capyyybaraaa]

thius is fucking me up

[crazykuroneko]

A Note from IWTV S2 Writer A. Zell Williams

Read here:

Fan Appreciation Daze

How a show's fans lifted my spirits years after working on the series.

[iteration-dave]

[micromontage]

when it wasn't meant to be 🤣🤣 but the potential of possibility still plagues you 🤔

[symphany]

LOUIS DE POINTE DU LAC Interview With The Vampire - 3.07 The Failures

[lestatdelioncuort]

Assad Zaman as THE VAMPIRE ARMAND

THE VAMPIRE LESTAT | 3.07 "THE FAILURES"

[c4zer]

oh ok

[ratemybreakdown]

finally got to watch the finale.. I have many thoughts, not quite solidified, and I'm enjoying the thoughts people are sharing in the tvl critical tag. from writing choices to budgeting to handling heavy themes without enough care, all these opinions are interesting to me and I will continue to read them thoughtfully. I'm sharing my initial thoughts for anyone who cares to read them

I enjoyed the show overall, it was a fun ride for someone who already needs to rewatch things several times in order to understand them completely anyway. it was fun having the story unfold in layers as I rewatched the episodes, waiting for the next episode each week. I feel like it wasn't a bad idea to lean into the "gotta watch each episode at least twice" thing considering how analytical the fandom is, and the episode release schedule

as for the criticism about how race has been handled this season, specifically for Louis and Claudia, I really hope that if we get a s4 they get black writers back in that room. black American writers, specifically. I think a lot of the complaints here make sense, and I can understand why people are so hurt and upset by how these writing decisions have been handled indelicately to say the least. and if they are going to delve into tva, and expand Armand as a character at all (and it feels like next season would naturally try to do that, based on how they have handled him so far) they need someone in there who is qualified to speak on their portrayal of him as well. they need to get some consultants at least. other than that I don't feel qualified to comment, just to read and digest what others are saying about it

as for the adaptation, story wise, I'm quite sure they didn't hit the mark fans were expecting and that includes me. I was really hoping for it to be more tvl and less setting up the story for adaptation of the later books. I think I understand why they did the things they did, but unfortunately it was a big swing and, to me at least, it missed. I wonder about this.. maybe they don't really understand that most people have not read the entire series. most readers have read the first 3 books, and that's what they want to see.. I think even most fans of the entire book series expected them to explore tvl and set up qotd, and that's about it, maybe a little body thief and tva sprinkled in. then again, maybe I'm speaking for "most people" here the way Lestat speaks for most vampires lol could be talking out of my ass. the last episode, unfortunately, reminded me a lot of the last season of game of thrones in that it seemed like surprising the audience - specifically the audience that spends time theorizing and memeing online - became more important than delivering a solid story, even if it didn't surprise anyone. again, I could be talking shit here, but that's how it felt to me at least

as for the portrayal of the characters, how they have changed them in the show from their book characters, I have always found all that very fascinating. I loved these books as a teenager, and I enjoy reading them now; I think, for seasons 1 & 2, most of the changes brought more depth to the characters, made them more interesting to me, and made rereading the books more fun as well. I'm not sure I can say the same about this season. imo tvl the book brings some much needed perspective and sympathy to the characters that we really don't get this season, especially for Armand and Gabrielle, but also for Lestat.. that seems like quite a failure considering the name of the season and its supposed source material. other people have said it better than I can myself, so I won't get too into it, but I'm still chewing on all of that and probably will be until AMC pulls the plug on the project, whenever that is

finally I need to speak on Armand. he is my very favorite book character, and I am fascinated (heh) by the overall show's portrayal of him. books tvl and qotd feel like their own little series to me, and the plot lines blend together a lot in my recollection, I'm not surprised that we haven't gotten much of his whole story yet. I'm also not surprised that he has a villainous arc this season, as the understanding and shaky forgiveness between he and Lestat simply has not been earned yet. it makes sense to me. it also makes sense that they left a whole lot of dm up in the air, yet to be addressed or resolved. if you walked away from the finale thinking Armand and Daniel are actual companions at this point, taking Armand's word for it, well I am thinking of what Daniel says to bowling bag Lestat. he's still really angry and unhinged and only looking out for himself, at least that's how it sounded to me, and I have every confidence that their connection isn't so much companionship as a truce with some kind of goal in mind. I feel like that ultimate plan still isn't really known to us. at least, I hope so. was Armand's entire agenda revenge, confrontation with his lovers, stopping the great conversion? did Daniel's motivation to join with him have anything to do with anything besides revenge against Lestat? these are only a couple of the MANY questions I still have about them at the end of the season, and even though they are being really weird for much of this season, I still really hope that we get to see dm play out with the romanticized sickeningly codependent dm we all know and love from qotd!

in short there's a lot to criticize this season, i haven't touched on it all just the things that are coming to mind atm, but I haven't given up entirely. if it gets renewed, they still have the chance to make some important changes to the team and fill in the gaps left. if only they will listen, and take the criticism into account, and maybe stop reading reddit and watching fandom tiktok