Tiny Stories

Writer. Human. What else do you really need to know?

[seraphcelene]

FIC RECS: Silvia Kundera

Because first I couldn't find a fic and then I did and now I'm happy.

Title: Sixteen in Bulgaria

Author: Silvia Kundera

Fandom: Harry Potter

Victor/Hermione, before Book 5

Finally Finished Fic! (say THAT three times fast)

Man, sometimes people ask for things, and you really REALLY don't know what you're going to get back. One can never tell with me. heh. Give

[bipolarclaudia]

Interview with the Vampire | user Starpeace

[so-many-ocs]

grabbing new writers by the shoulders. it is important to write what you love and to love what you write. if you spend all your time trying to make something other people will approve of you will hate yourself and everything around you. learn at your own pace. you have time. i’m proud of you

[captainsaltymuyfancy]

Claudia being the Sybil or guide who can see truths others cannot, whose existence is defined only in terms of what she can or cannot do for men with power over her, who takes us into the underworld (the past and the aspects of our memories we try to forget), who is one of the few people able to come BACK from the underworld. Claudia being Juno swearing vengeance on those who wronged her, vowing to break the order of the universe and defy fate and gods and existence itself to have her revenge. Claudia as Dido, the true great leader burning to death because of the men who used and failed her, the men who claimed to love her only to abandon her. Claudia as the Furies, moving between our world and the underworld to punish the living and dead for the injustice they wrought upon the world. I’m dizzy.

[seraphcelene]

I love this reading. Meta textual get downs are my jam. The accuracy of this also makes me sad because in nearly every way these references illuminate how Claudia's existence is framed and defined by the men in her life. When thinking about Season 2 as a critical exploration of how history is chronicled and codified (Remember all those references to who gets to own the story?) it is unfortunately accurate and I am unsurprisingly disappointed.

[seraphcelene]

IWTV 2.8: And that's the End of it. There's Nothing Else.

Well. Damn.

"Arson is a crime of passion."

We always knew how this was going to end and it was both satisfying and anti-climatic. The fire? I wanted more of it. I wanted to watch the Theatre des Vampires WRITHE while it burned. The tragedy of Claudia's death, the snuffed potential of her immortality, in episode seven demanded it. The way she fought for herself and Madeleine, the way she fought SO HARD to be heard demanded a reckoning reflected from the eyes of her tormentors. I wanted the coven, and especially Santiago to SUFFER.

The ending was peculiarly cold in comparison to Alderman Fenwick back in season 1. His death was so personal in a way that the fire, despite its passion, was not. Maybe its because most of the coven were locked in their caskets so we only got their screams when I wanted them to SEE their executioner and look him in the eyes while he tore them to pieces. Claudia DESERVED that level of retribution.

pirateshelly wrote about Claudia's storyline here:

https://www.tumblr.com/pirateshelly/758254364119990272?source=share

As much as nearly every character she meets tends to act like there's something uniquely broken and wrong with Claudia, at no point does it

GO Read it.

I include my comment there because I think the post perfectly encapsulates what was wrong with Claudia's story arc. To note, despite the insistence of The Great Laws, there was nothing wrong with Claudia, and that break has everything to do with the change in her circumstances from book to show and the failure of the show runners to account for that change as explicitly as they did for Louis.

In the books, Claudia is turned at 5 years old. In the Neil Jordan movie, she's 11. In the show, she's meant to be 14. 14 isn't so young that she can't age into and move through society. I looked 16 when I was 20, it's not a far fetch. The writer's needed something else to convince us that Claudia was truly going to break from having an immortal life. There were really small suggestions, but mostly we were just TOLD this would happen. That old show don't tell rule would have fixed alot here. But then we got Madeleine and it was a beautiful future that unfolded. Better than Claudia needing a mommy, Claudia had a friend, maybe a future lover, someone who FINALLY put her FUCKING FIRST!

Claudia in season 2 was otherwise woefully underutilized.

Shifting Louis' backstory, the era he lived in, his race, his sexuality, and then making explicit the nature of his relationship with Lestat blew the story wide open. There was so much room for this story to be made relevant and truthful. Rolin Jones said that changing Louis's story was a choice to place it in a "time period that was as exciting aesthetically as the 18th century was without digging into a plantation story that nobody really wanted to hear now". I'd like to get an amen right now because as a Black person in America I am REAL tired of every historical story of the black experience being located during slavery, the Civil Rights movement, or the modern, urban ghetto. There is a place for those stories, they are important and necessary and we HAVE to continue to have those conversations and remember those histories. But I also want new things shown new ways and nuanced to reflect the millions of different experiences that make up the lived experience.

Louis was made active and full of agency and anger. Making him a businessman with a certain amount of power and authority and then having him deal with TPTB in the skin he was born in was exquisite. He lived in multiple worlds and we really got to see and understand that, but it wasn't all misery. The circumstances of his mortal birth were allowed to live and breath on the surface of his skin in a way that Claudia was not gifted. Season 1 told the story of what it meant to be a queer, black man in America. It glanced very briefly on what it meant for Claudia as young and black and female. Three different states of being that impacted her different ways and then coalesced into what could have been greater than her sense of disconnect from Louis or her rage at Lestat. Arguably, Season 2 did more to interrogate her status. A second class citizen as a mortal and made doubly so by the condition of her re-birth.

Episodes 3 and 4 make the most of her, I think. The potential for her immortal life is suggested in episode 6, but perhaps in a meta reading of the stoey at large, there is no room for Claudia. She haunts the interview in the same way that she haunts Louis and as we later learn, Lestat. In the books, Claudia's ghost is imprinted upon her makers, but she is seldom truly centered.

That she is an underused and voiceless character being marched towards an end established from S1E1, it's like the nuance of her life isn't as compelling a thing to explore. I don't know. I think there's a lot to ruminate on and dig out about Claudia in the series, but too much of it is sublimated to the men's stories. I wanted more of it to be explicit. She is an excuse for Louis rage in the last episode, a powder keg for Louis to strike himself against. The last straw.

I loved that Louis was a little mad when he got out of the crypt. The voices and the visions could have lasted longer.

"All the madness and rage exited my body and nothing replaced it." What must that be like? To love someone so much and to know that they didn't love you as much? For Armand to know that Louis only picked him to spite Lestat. In reality not even second best because that place belongs to Claudia.

Fuck.

And then Armand and the truth. I wasn't surprised. Last episode, I was surprised that it was apparently Armand who turned the tide in Louis's sentencing. I initially thought it was Lestat because I didn't think Armand had that much power considering the size of the group. Maybe that's my novel bias kicking in. So when the reveal was that it was Lestat after all … again, not surprised.

And then it takes us all the way back to Omikase. Chef's choice because Louis leaves believing what Lestat wants him to believe. How he ultimately tells Louis that he "gave" him to Armand. A toxic ass phrase especially charged by the race bending, but even on its own … who the fuck gets to say or do that? Lestat for all that he loves, has no clue how to take care of people or treat.

In the end, Louis doesn't kill Armand, although he has every right. I LOVED those closing scenes. The MS and Armand's hand written notes. Daniel's triumphant reveal of Armand's duplicity. I NEVER liked Armand because -- MIND CONTROL -- although there were times were I felt sorry for the dude. He legitimately seemed to love Louis. But, hey, then you don't make a sacrifice of your lover to your old friends. The fact that he really was going to sit there and let them kill Louis? Yeah, nah, I'm good on him.

Lestat is still just as terrible. Once again, he chooses Louis over Claudia. Always someone else over Claudia and it's not until it's way too late does he understand that he was her father, too. Fucking asshole.

I'm excited for season 3. Someone posted how Louis's story is wide open and how anything is possible for him given the reimagining in the show. I 100% agree. The Vampire Chronicles were written as the Lestat Show. It's exciting to see them bring Louis to the forefront. I'm betting that they're not going to leave him tucked away in a crumbling plantation or even sitting at the top of a tower in Dubai. He issued a challenge at the end of episode 8 worthy of book Lestat at his most rebellious.

The potential is infinite for how this all can go. I can't wait to see it.

[seraphcelene]

IWTV 2.7: I Could Not Prevent It

I almost hate to keep circling the drain on what this season of IwtV has done, but it's so choice and so intentional and it makes my little writer's heart sing. I love it because I love narrative. Storytelling in all of its nuanced, complex, diverse ways is a thing that fascinates me to no end. An unreliable narrator is arguably one of my favorite things because I already have an almost immediate distrust of the narrative voice. So, when an author does that shit on purpose? 😍

Oh my Fucking Gods! I have a hard on for that shit because who do you trust, what's the truth, how do we understand the story we are being told? I love the act of identifying loosely patched over edges and pulling at loose threads. There's a lie here, someone is playing all up in my face and I want the answers! And a really good writer who implements an unreliable narrator leaves tells all the fuck over the place. After all ....

"You cannot script a hurricane."

Okay, here we are in episode seven, still circling the drain of who has ownership of the story? Louis is the vampire who is being "interviewed" with the occasional footnote offered by Armand. This is in tension with the book in which Louis's is the only voice. What has changed, to make this a richer story, is how introducing Armand's perspective now turns everything on its head. It's an explicit kind of dig at the way that interviews are curated by both the interviewer and the interviewee. What are you willing to discuss? What's on the record? What's off the record? How much external research and material will be introduced? How does the story survive interpretation? What's the fucking goal here?

I'm thinking a little about the Andrew McCarthy documentary about the Brat Pack and how one New York Magazine article in 1985 turned the lives of a group of up and coming actors sideways. David Blum, who wrote the article, had an agenda. He had a point to prove and the article wasn't especially flattering. Watching the doc it becomes clear that Emilio Estevez had a different idea about what that article was supposed to be about. But such is the nature of the interview. In the end, the story shared, in all of its limited, constructed dance of questions and answers is still subject to editing, the perspective of the interviewer, and interpretation by the reader.

Here, Louis has a point to make. Exactly what that is? Who really knows. He does the first interview as a kind of love letter/suicide note to the world before he walks into the sun. This "re-do" might still be such. It also might be his attempt to understand what happened. He has questions, he knows there's holes and somewhere in the back of his mind, he knows that he can't and doesn't trust Armand. He also could want to, as I think he states in S1E1, provide an accurate accounting of what vampires are like.

Honestly, I'm on the self-discovery train.

I love how when Louis gets angry, and he has been getting angrier and angrier, he snaps hard on people. The way he shushes Daniel, "I am speaking," was delicious. Armand's discomfort was apparent and I had to wonder given this is the season's penultimate episode what we're about to find out about what happened in the past and his part in it. He's been concerned about how this was all going to go and he's only gotten MORE uncomfortable as the series has progressed.

But, and as always, what do we get to really know? Who's story is being remembered?

Louis's true and living history?

A flawed truth that Louis remembers in fragments patched over by imperfect logic? (how memory maybe really works?)

A false truth fed to him by Armand?

How about a messy patchwork of all the fucked up above.

Lestat is back. Out for blood or on the apology tour, not exactly sure. The Brat Prince himself treading the boards of the theater he helped to establish, what a sight. Lestat loves the show, he loves performance. It's definitely one of the characteristics carried over from the book. Lestat is petty and savage and a liar. He makes himself a victim, but why? What is the value of it? The trial is a farce and Lestat feels wronged and wants revenge. He wants to be as important to Louis as Claudia is. He wants to be loved in return because he is a terrible person and he knows it, but also, Lestat de Lioncourt feels incredibly deep. For all of his toxicity, Lestat was written as a character who loves to the detriment of his own best interest. And he loves Louis. I remember them from the books as acknowledging that they are that couple who are meant to be together but never CAN be together because they are too toxic to each other.

"I couldn't force him to love me. I couldn't force him to return my affections … and so … I broke him." TOXIC and PETTY AS FUCK.

Stories told by the heartbroken. What lies do you make up to explain and justify a thing that happened so that you are not culpable?

Lestat in this episode and the next is also prepping us for the shift that must, to some degree, come with Season 3. How do you turn a villain into an anti-hero into a hero? Lestat is the hero of The Vampire Lestat and of The Vampire Chronicles. I think the show runners are starting that redemption arc now. Not the smallest part of which is Lestat as an unknown quantity, uncontrollable if he doesn't want to be.

Daniel's voice is honest and unnervingly direct. He strips the window dressing off of everything, exposing nuance to a critical light that leaves everything sordid and as ugly as reality just is. In that there is, perhaps, the closest we will ever get to the truth.

Arguably, if it weren't for Santiago we might forget that alot of this is bullshit. Angry, jealous, manipulative, Santiago's performance during the trial forces the viewer to confront the reality of a crafted narrative. He knows they're lying and spitting scripted facts skewed for effect. It was brilliant to watch the bounce between his goals and Lestat's constant slide into melancholia. HAHAHA! A hurricane, indeed. That guy was SO. ANNOYED.

Episode 7 continues with the manipulation of the storyline made as clear and explicit as it ever has been. The way the music is used during the trial, Lestat's lies and half-truths, the animation running on the screen. We're being beaten over the head with this blur between performance and reality.

Watching the re-tread of how Claudia became a vampire makes me me feel like I need to go back to watch Season 1. The gaslighting is real! And then Louis' capitulation to the differences in the way he remembers it happened and the way that Lestat says it happens is perfect! Tell it Lestat's way, for the book. Because he DOESN'T REMEMBER. There are, after all, three sides to every story: your side, my side, and the truth.

Louis' memory has been so tampered with. By time, by Armand's manipulations, by madness, and trauma.

I still maintain that Armand is trash.

I thought the title would be a quote from Louis who in admission of his own powerlessness laments Claudia's death as an unavoidable failure on his part. That it is Armand who has ownership of the line changes the story, as always. I could not prevent it suggests that there was nothing that he could do, but the reality, as has so often been the case with Armand, is that he did not want to. The entire sham trial was preventable had he chosen Louis over the coven to begin with. The unfortunate reality is that he, like Lestat, despised Claudia for Louis' adoration of her. He was jealous and would forever be and the only way that he could have exactly what he wanted was to get rid of her. Doing it this way, he gets to blame the coven and Lestat. Arguably, Lestat for all of his machinations and insecurities, his petulant rage, actually loves and was loved by Louis in a way that Armand, despite Louis's modern protestations, never can or will be.

I'm so in love with the way the story is told that I don't talk too much about Claudia. A BOOK could be written about the silencing of marginalized female voices. Claudia, despite her diaries, has no real voice in this. She is an assemblage of half-remembrances and a yellow dress pinned to the wall. It makes it so much more poignant and electric then that she curses every last person sitting in that theater before she burns. There is no need to hide that or shade it. It was not directed at Louis. Armand's willingness to allow Claudia to burn while not doing the same for Louis is tragic. And again, all of this could have been unnecessary. I've said before that I don't think Armand was ever much of an alpha.

[seraphcelene]

IWTV: S2E6 - Like the Light by Which God Made the Vampire Before He Made Light

Bad Theater? A poor plot? Stupid/Naive/Blind victims?

What does it mean that the title of this episode is a ridiculous line from a ridiculous play intended to hide machinations?

This episode like the entire season, indeed the point of the entire show is curation. Omikase … but of a different kind.

The story of the Talamasca offered up by David Talbot. The story of events at the restaurant relayed by Real!Rashid and Daniel back at the Crypt. As we continue to deal with cultivated narratives, we are now also dealing with the fallout when the diner doesn't care for what's being served. Or perhaps a better analogy is what happens when the diner finds out they're being served gas station sushi frozen in a case versus fresh and hand crafted.

But maybe that's the trick here. With Omikase, with sushi at a proper restaurant, you watch the chef make your meal right in front of you. But what if the chef is especially good at slight of hand?

For all that Armand insists that he's only done what Louis asked, it's hard to hear that and just believe it because too many other things have turned out to be a lie. The problem with trust once broken is that you can't really repair it. But what if you can erase the knowledge of the break? What if you can wish it away. On the surface, Armand does that. Repeatedly.

As a viewer, I cannot trust Armand. I cannot trust Louis. I cannot trust the narrative of the interview. It's fascinating to be faced with the real intellectual challenge of why we choose to believe what we do. Why do we choose to believe the people that we do? You, the viewer, like Louis, like Armand, like Daniel, are asked to make a choice.

Armand's anger at Claudia. Him calling her a manipulator is wild. Armand's gift predisposes him to being a most excellent manipulator and I have to wonder how out of control with Louis he feels knowing that Claudia comes first for him in so many ways.

I'm not going to talk about Claudia this time around, but I do think she is more like Daddy Lou then she is willing to admit. Her brashness, her rebelliousness, her need.

"Fuck them vampires."

[abilusanji]

The thing about fanfiction after writing original fiction for so long is that it feels like taking weighted clothes off. If I wanted a cool plot twist or a reveal or a mystery I had to set up all the expectations myself. I had to set up the red herrings, the clues, the boundaries of what was reasonable.

In fanfiction I drop a name from canon I never referenced before and it will carry the weight that a hundred pages of set up would carry in original fiction.

Do you have any fucking idea how intoxicating that is.

[abilusanji]

The shared language of a fandom in fanfiction is so amazingly conducive to a type of story telling that we lost when public domain was gutted as a legal concept. And it’s such a thrilling way to make stories and I weep for how rare it is to encounter.

Like you sort of get a ghoulish attempt with star wars style “look it’s revan” but it’s still only a handful of people who get to play. With fandom everyone gets to play with the full toolbox, with infinite chances to try.

[dsudis]

It’s striking me really hard after reading this post–so much of what is considered the ~canon~ of western literature really arises out of this situation where everyone who wrote (i.e. a tiny minority of educated men and the very very rare educated woman) was operating with a common set of referents. There were just so few books, back then, and if you were educated enough to write, those were the books you had read, and that your teachers had read and told you about. Everyone got the same references.

We talk about the Divine Comedy being Bible fanfic and so forth, but it really was in a way we don’t always articulate–it wasn’t just that it was repurposing other stories the author had read. It was the product of an author who felt himself a part of a community that had this shared set of referents. He only had to allude to things, and his intended readers knew all of the context. Being in modern fandom allows us to be part of a community that likewise shares a canon and shares references and influences, something that is increasingly lost in modern copyrighted fiction where everyone is constantly desperate to be original.

[seraphcelene]

IWTV S2E5 - Don't Be Afraid, Just Start the Tape

I don't have much to offer on this one. The episode is telling us something very particular and I don't know exactly what it is. It will mean something later, of that I am sure.

So, loosely ... thoughts ...

(In)Planted memories.

"I want this … to remember."

"Armand preserves my happiness even when I don't or can't."

"You're a liar." "So are you Louis, whether you know it or not."

Performance - The performance of Louis du Pointe du Lac in the present as an urbane millionaire vampire in Dubai vs the tortured, self-loathing brother-creature of the 70's and before. I have to wonder where the performance comes from. How is that created?

[captainsaltymuyfancy]

The character perpetuating cycles of gendered/sexualized violence in this ep was not Louis “going pimp mode” on Armand, it was Armand systematically breaking Claudia by denying her true age, her identity, her humanity, and her dignity. His attacks on her—both physical and psychological—were absolutely vicious. By removing her autonomy and humiliating her at every turn, he continues the abuse and captivity Claudia suffered from Lestat and Bruce, and the abuse and captivity he himself suffered from Marius and his ilk. It is not a coincidence that in the episode where Armand speaks on his own horrible past, we also see him triple down on making Claudia’s present and future absolutely miserable. It’s the perpetuation of dynamics and cycles of violence. Yes, anything forever is horror. But it’s the punching down by all the characters, and all of them punching down on Claudia forever that makes it both a horror and a tragedy.

[seraphcelene]

THIS!

I had not thought of this point in the episode, but it resonates!

I had a conversation with my brother a few weeks ago who absolutely did not understand what I meant when I said that men had power over women. Because he is not a person who ever contemplates hurting a woman, he genuinely didn't get it. It took me a moment to get out of my own way and rephrase what I was offering to our conversation in a way that he could get it. What I said is that it's not just financial or social power, it's physical power. If you perceive yourself as powerless in some context, some people will dominant (in the conversation we were having re: beat the shit out of) the people they deem to have less power, i.e. who are physically smaller and weaker, then they are. That is their power. They exact retribution on a world that holds them in perceived submission by torturing someone who cannot fight back. It could be a man beating his wife who then beats the kids who then torture the dog. It was eye opening for him and he admitted he had never thought about power in that way because physical dominance was never okay in our house. Armand's insistence on hierarchies and power structure give him agency in a life where he doesn't feel that he has any. From our first view of him fresh from Rome to that moment on the park bench when he admits to Louis that he does not want to lead the coven, Armand is ever victimized. In the face of that victimization, perhaps made more egregious by Louis perceived freedom (and perhaps Armand's jealousy of Louis love for Claudia which is really the only thing that holds him in Paris), he torments her and attempts to strip her down to the nothing that he himself was before Lestat.

[seraphcelene]

IWTV S2E4 - I Want You More Than Anything in the World

There are games being played.

Let's talk about Louis -- how he's been transformed from the melancholy, self-flagellating moral mess to almost equal parts temper and angst, ever balanced between joy and hope and rage.

I can't compare this series to the books because it is a different beast altogether, and I LOVE the changes.

There is something sinister and beautiful in the way that IwtV has turned gender politics on its head. Queer love is centered and the vulnerability of emotion demanded of women in depictions of romantic relationships gets equal demand in the male leads. That is wildly true of the novels and makes for a welcome shift in the way that men are portrayed on screen. Armand's NEED oozes out of his eyes when he's with Louis. He is so in love. He also opens a vein describing his life before vampirism. It's a narrative that typically frames womanhood -- objectified, sexualized, enslaved and without agency. Then there's Louis grief, guilt, and unrequited love for Lestat, a force in every scene Jacob Anderson is in.

The commentary on how women fit and are objectified within society are there too. Madeline's shunning after her affair with a young German solider is explained in equally by "patriotism" and loose morals (she is slut shamed). Claudia's infantilization, at complete odds with how she sees herself and wants to be seen is horrifying. Her "maman" in the play makes a comment about Baby Lulu distracting her father so that he keeps his hands off her (the mother). It's coarse theater, of course, and it's meant to be a purple comment that suggests and titillates. It is also, to a modern audience, or at least this person as audience, horrifying. It reminded me immediately of how women are portrayed as objectified stand ins to attract the male gaze. Claudia's debasement, sexualized infant for the mortals and walking ridicule as blasphemy to the immortals, is a game, a show and a joke for everyone. That girl is going to break. Her developing relationship with Madeline is the closest depiction of normalcy and something she craves and has craved since she accidentally ate that boy back in Season 1.

It all makes an interesting comment on power structure. Who has it, who doesn't, who wants it, who doesn't. Season 1 sets Louis as the beta to Lestat's alpha. It makes sense. Lestat is a natural born alpha, but Louis as a beta is a little sleight of hand. Yes with Lestat, but as is increasingly more obvious absolutely not with Armand. Louis even reminds us that he is good at running things.

I'd argue that Armand was never really an alpha vampire. He holds the coven because his dark gifts are strong enough to allow him to, but not because anyone is particularly afraid or in awe of him. It makes Louis and Armand as a coven of two an interesting question. @lynnenne has posited that Louis is the one in control. I find that idea deliciously fascinating and more likely as we're watching the events of the past. But because this is still a story of unreliable narrator's, I have to question the truth. Is he? or isn't he?

Louis dresses his disdain and his resistance to emotional intimacy in Lestat's figure. He holds on to him as armor to hold off real emotional attachment even as he stares lovingly into Armand's face in the present and declares that he loved him even back them. I don't know that him letting go of Lestat in the rain (SO FUCKING SAD AND OH!) was about him deciding to be in love so much as it is about him deciding to let go of guilt and fear so that he can move forward. Lestat was his past. Running the theater could be his future and it would be to protect Claudia as much as it would be to protect Armand.

But again … what of this story is real? Daniel's migraines, the reemerging memories of San Francisco that are very much centered around what looks like Armand playing mind games.

Little things I loved about this episode:

Madeline and Claudia in the shop and the way that Claudia is lamenting that she is a vampire and Madeline is dinner

"Go sit in your choice, sister." - That fight was epic and hurtful and real. Both of them abandoned in different ways.

Claudia calling Armand on his shit. She is Lestat's daughter for sure. She doesn't give a fuck about the rituals and the rules. Claudia is looking for a space to belong in, but it has to be shaped for her and according to her rules. Anything else will chafe.

"The wilderness that is our daughter."

Louis letting Lestat go is one of the saddest thing ever. The music is a slightly discordant, manipulative goodbye in this very constructed story reflecting a very constructed end between Louis and Lestat. I love the way that Louis makes Lestat say apple and then apple in French as proof that he is just a figment of his imagination because Lestat is never that accommodating. "There isn't going to be a hunt, is there?" And then he is washed away by the rain.

[seraphcelene]

IwtV: S2E3 - No Pain - "Did he break you, Louis? Are you broken?"

I'm behind. So this is very late.

The theme continues… unreliable narrators, memory and the owner of the story.

It was very on the nose this time. Molloy, the documenter (ostensibly he tells truths as a journalist but we should never be so trusting as to forget that journalists, too, have an angle), being told stories, the truth of which he is trying to decipher. He grills and he listens, conjectures, and he is force-fed nuggets of the past. The constructed story, the tag-teamed memories that Louis and Armand share are, at their best, rose stained half-truths. At their worse, they are lies. I suppose there is no guarantee that immortality guarantees a clear and exact memory. This is not, after all, The Invisible Life of Addie Larue.

No Pain made the early decision to remind us what we're getting in Season 2 ...

Omikase.

“Chef's choice.” You are given what they want you to have as they want you to have it. It's an experience curated by a single voice for a singular effect.

Everyone in this series is telling stories. Daniel, Louis, Claudia, the "actors" in the coven, Armand. They all tell their own stories, but what happens when other cooks enter the kitchen? What happens when the act of storytelling becomes a communal activity? What happens when that community is at odds with itself and the there is no singular goal for the product?

Santiago, Real!Rashid, Raglan James (shout out Tale of the Body Thief - WTF?!?!? Do I have THOUGHTS about that one!), Daniel's fractured memory re-emerging, Louis' grief and PTSD wearing Lestat's face.

There is no voice in this season that I trust. Not a single one. Daniel's, maybe, as he tries to unwind truth from lie from a willful blurring of ugly reality. Who's in control? Louis? Armand?

I don't KNOW the answer to that question. I cannot tell. I only know that at the end of the day, I do not believe the relationship between Armand and Louis. As the story unfolds and unravels … Louis's love and faith, his willful blindness in the face of Armand's warning about what will become of Claudia even as we have seen the beginnings of it in Claudia's shaky fingers as she puts on lipstick.

So, let's watch our fingers, children.

Also … dude, just, shout out because Sam Reid is sexy as FUCK! That walk at the river?!?!? FIRE. Saunter, baby! BURN!

[seraphcelene]

IwtV - S2E2: Do You Know What It Meaens to be Loved by Death

I'm in love with the way this season is playing with memory.

Louis's faulty memories. His past remembrances of Lestat fueled by love and guilt and the current distortion created by Armand. Louis's apparent complicity in Armand's reshaping of his memory lends itself to a kind of control that feels very much like the gaslighting heart of an abusive relationship. That echoing exchange as they finish each other's sentences as much performance for Daniel's cynical, disbelief as it is, I think, a performance that Armand enacts for Louis's benefit. A demonstration intended to remind him of how in love they are, but that, in reality is just about control. The emotional, psychological browbeating they give Daniel over Alice perfectly demonstrates that and I think it's a mistake to think that Armand is doing anything different with Louis. In fact, Louis, at his most cruel, is Armand's puppet.

Albeit this is a different Louis then the one who awakened in 1900's New Orleans, Louis's anger is generally about combustion. He holds back, measured and controlled until he can't hold all his feelings in any longer and it tips too far. Louis is a bang, not a whimper. Lestat is the one who is more likely to play with his food and Louis toying with Daniel feels very unfamiliar to me.

I'm so interested to see where this is going. I don't remember the book, it's been too long ago, and they've bent the story in gorgeous ways for a new audience and a new age, but this all promises to be delicious!

[iwtvbigbang]

The Boy Who Cried Vampire

Fic and art by Lynnenne

In S1 Ep4, Daniel says, “It's not an article, it's a book. We can do a chapter in Vanity Fair.” This is one way that article might go. I expect all of this to be jossed by Season 2 but damn, it was a fun thought experiment! Trigger warnings for period-typical racism from Louis's human life. And Daniel-typical racism because he can be an ass sometimes.

[lynnenne]

The chapter in Vanity Fair has been published! My first fic for this fandom, so I'm a little excited. :D I had so much fun working on this. Huge thank you to @seraphcelene for the beta and sensitivity read, and also to my longtime friend Kita (who's not on Tumblr) for her input. All credit to @cbrownjc for the idea of Louis drinking addicts' blood as a form of self-medication. Head canon accepted!

"Let's get this out of the way first: Nobody is going to believe this story."

Click for the magazine spread or read it on AO3

[seraphcelene]

Go. Read!

And read it in the gorgeous magazine spread form because ... perfection.

[devotiondroid]

@lynnenne a classic style of thirst trap lmao

[lynnenne]

I’m ancient and @brightfelon had to explain to me what a “thirst trap” is and I approve of this newfangled art form

[seraphcelene]

@lynnenne - I'm trying write stuff!!!! That does not include vampires. What is you doing distracting me like this?!

[antidisneyinc]

iwtv 2022 is a masterclass in how to add diversity to an existing story that not only acknowledges the characters' new identities but incorporates the change seamlessly and uses it to IMPROVE the material. brilliant, no notes

[seraphcelene]

100% agree with this statement. It was the very FIRST thing I noticed in that gorgeous first episode. Look, I was a stan from way back ... 10th grade circa 1992. Possibly earlier because I inhaled books like air, ate them for every meal. I loved the original Louis and the original mixed-up family love affair that was the three of them. But this show made it even more nuanced and added SO MUCH color (not just with the actor's skin color). 10 out of 10!

[seraphcelene]

Me meme

Rules: Answer the 15 questions, then tag 15 people.

@letteredlettered, the best writing partner a girl can have, tagged me!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Are you named after anyone?  Alas, no

When was the last time you cried? Jeez!! Periomenopause got me on the ropes like woah!! When was the last time I DIDN'T CRY at something ... Srsly, though ... I finished Nona the Ninth last night and that last one scene with Cam and Palamedes definitely set off the water works. And then Pyrrha carrying Nona in the end. And just Nona being an adorable baby all over. Yeah. That periomenopause ain't no joke.

Do you have kids? Nope. That ship sailed without me. I do not regret it.

Do you use sarcasm a lot? I'm sure more than I should.

What is the first thing you notice about people? That they are there.

What color are your eyes? Brown

Scary movies or happy endings? Depends on my mood. Scary movies in the day time, happy endings as a palate cleanser in the nighttime.

Any special talents? I can type 67 words per minute

Where were you born? Los Angeles, CA

What are your hobbies? reading, riting, very little rhthmatic

Do you have any pets? Again, alas, no

What sports do you play/have you played? I don't do sports. I like them only in theory or in observation

How tall are you? a sad and meagre 5'4"

Favorite Subjects in School? English. You are not surprised.

Dream Job? Writer. Enough to LIVE and DIE on. I don't gotta be JK Rowling or Stephen King but, a living wage. Like a real living wage. From books. That I make up in my head.

IDK who to tag!!! I don't get around on Tumblr very well. At random ... (drum roll, please) @brophigenia because they have got some pretty keen CAOS fanfic that I adore.