Couch Potato

Probably busy reading. 35+. Minors and terfs not welcome here. Pfp by @camestela.

[howlerbat]

I tried not to dwell too much on Claudia's seance scene this season but I think what felt off about it more than her lashing out (which I expected) was how Louis and Lestat react to it.

This scene was written, it seems, to put their complicated feelings about Claudia to rest with the "Pretty much closes the door on that!" line right as they proceed to plan their shared future together. And it feels weird.

I can absolutely see them coming out of this experience having bonded even more but in a different way. Because they came there for closure. Louis wanted to know she "found a bit of quiet" so that HE can feel better and move on with his life, and Claudia rightfully denied him this closure. It shouldn't have felt like "closing the door", it should've been a painful reminder that Claudia will always be an open wound that both of them share.

But it almost felt like instead of reminding us of all the ways in which they failed her, the writers tried to demonize Claudia so that Louis doesn't feel guilty for being with Lestat after. The only part of her monologue I liked was about Madeline.

Idk I just keep thinking to that Bojack Horseman episode about the telescope where a man dying of cancer rightfully points out "I'm dying, I'm not gonna feel better! And you don't get to either. You get to live with the shitty things you did for the rest of your life, and know that it's never going to be okay!" And I wish Claudia's monologue had a sentiment more along those lines rather than "I hate you more than anyone so you should stop feeling guilty"

[vorreitenertiqui]

Someone gifted Sam a pocket-sized Armand 🤏🏽

[smashed-potato]

What do you mean pocket-sized? That is Armand’s actual height, I’ll have you know.

[smashed-potato]

Just put two fitted sheets in the dryer. Gonna let them battle it out and see who wins.

[undying-princess]

knowing how it tends to go with male authors and their wives it was probably marge who wrote the odyssey

[starlightxraven]

Nobody needs AI to search the Internet, court says in ruling against Google

Google AI Overview court loss in Germany could spell doom for AI search industry.

[appalachian-werewolf]

"Google AI Overview court loss in Germany could spell doom for AI search industry."

It fucking better.

[mrsjdavis]

Like to charge, reblog to cast?

[newbarktownalumni]

[ldrloversblog]

How to scare white people in this fandom

[flock-of-cassowaries]

I simply feel that if someone walks into a bowling alley carrying a severed head, we should, at some point, see the severed head bowled.

…and, possibly, a spinning POV from the perspective of the severed head as it hurtles down the lane.

Like, I really enjoyed the episode, but that was a miss for me.

[smashed-potato]

Yes, that would have been such a good visual!

[coldeveryseason]

one of iwtv's key narrative themes was "love and abuse can coexist in the same relationship" but tvl has seemingly replaced that with "love redeems abuse"- instead of engaging with the weight of louis as a survivor of antiblack violence/gaslighting/psychological abuse or engaging with the weight of lestat as a survivor of incestuous sexual/emotional abuse, the narrative condemns loumand and gabistat bc armand and gabriella didn't truly love their victims. the show has this really weird and problematic idea that as long as there's love in a relationship, that can make up for all kinds of harm and violence...but if there's a lack of love that's the breaking point. and i just find that really weak as a theme and disconnected from the emotional reality of abuse survivors- it also feels like a cop-out for the writers to avoid confronting the nature of the abuse of either fan favorite (armand) or author's darling (gabriella) characters.

textually engaging with the fact that armand is a lyncher and the violence he does to louis is often directly pulled from the violence done to black people under enslavement and segregation would mean the nonblack writers would have to textually engage with blackness as a central theme and question their own impulses like why the show disproportionately and voyeuristically depicts the brutalization of black bodies- textually engaging with the fact that gabriella has been raping her own son for over 200 years would mean the misogynistic writers would have to engage with the subject of sexual abuse and assault beyond "louis the pimp" and question their own impulses like why so many of gabriella's scenes with lestat are played for taboo titillation or "comic relief". it's a lot easier to sidestep all of that and go "oh these relationships were fucked up and doomed bc there's no real love there".

and this reductive and anti-survivor take on "love conquers all" even reflects in how the writers approach relationships that aren't meant to be narrative dead-ends. the lack of care in how they wrote loustat this season makes a lot of sense when you realize the writers think they can depict lestat doing and saying all kinds of shit to louis and it doesn't matter, they don't have to show lestat expressing true contrition or growth bc they love each other (or so we're told) abuse doesn't matter if there's love ok

[javascript-official]

I never understood the saying "the world is your oyster" because oysters are famously very difficult to open and don't really have much meat in them and they taste kind of bad, if the saying was "the world is your tiramisu" I would understand because tiramisu is amazing incredible but oysters aren't all that and I am sorry but I have to speak my truth

[mexagirlish]

i don't understand "the world is your tiramisu" either because tiramisu fucking SUCKS ASS

[smashed-potato]

Yes both of those are actually gross! I declare that the world is my iced coffee because I love it and I always think i want more of it, but sometimes if I overdo it, i suffer tummy ache.

[holy--milk]

remember when this show actually understood what was going on with the loumand dynamic

[gangrelgimmick]

I think it's Gabrielle that disappoints me the most. Anne Rice started writing the vampire chronicles in a context where women could not own their own bank accounts, when marital rape was not criminalised, and in my country at a time when women could not legally drink in public. To take a character who is so clearly informed by the author's frustrations with gender in a world that does not recognise her as a full and autonomous person and turn her into a one-note villainous sexpot is not only boring it's incredibly insulting

[de8thm8rt]

it blows my fucking mind that someone could genuinely like the way paul was included in this episode. paul did not trust and could not stand lestat. there were hints that would paul would commit suicide, such as him overeating and having extra wine because he wanted to enjoy his last night on earth. eating all his favorite foods and indulging because he won’t get another chance. he wanted to see the sunrise with his brother like when they were little. he also wanted to ask louis who he trusted what the state of both louis’s and grace’s life were. to see if they would be alright without him.

that’s why he asks louis if he thinks levi truly loves grace. then he brings up louis getting married and asks him about his dealings with lestat. and when louis tells him he’s done with lestat. paul visibly relaxes, he’s assured that both his brother and sister are safe and in good hands. they’ll be fine without him, especially because paul knows the burdens he places on them. so he thinks that this would be in their best interest, that it’ll be okay.

he reminds louis one more time to stay away from lestat and calls him the devil.

the last thing he says to his brother is “i love you, louis” before walking off that roof

now paul isn’t appearing to his brother who he loved more than anyone in the world. instead he’s appearing to the white french man whom he thought was the devil and could not stand. not only does he appear to this man but he THANKS HIM. “for loving his brother the way he needed to be loved”

idk how you could watch the first season and then watch this fucking 60 car pile up and not wonder what fumes the writers were vigorously huffing.

the only thing this season excelled at was completely dismantling, destroying, and pissing on the ashes of the first two.

[smashed-potato]

This was possibly the cringiest moment of this season. And there’s so much competition for that title! They should have had Paul walk up, look straight at the camera and say, “Dear viewers, this is why you should never kys. Because your beloved sibling might end up eternally tangled in some self-centered white guy’s drama.” And then Lestat wakes up in the coffin.

[ldrloversblog]

Eric is so real. If I too had two baddies on each side, my hands would go even lower

[smashed-potato]

I have thoughts about Assad arching his back here.

[forbiddenwyvernllama]

Season 4 of The Queen of the Damned

I just saw the teaser for Season 4 of The Queen of the Damned, and I'm literally torn apart by contradictions. On one hand, I'm absolutely thrilled, because Akasha is one of my all-time favorite complex and morally ambiguous characters in The Vampire Chronicles. And Sheila Atim in this role is simply divine. She had only about five minutes of screen time, but she nailed it. It was that rare moment when I actually leaned toward the screen and said, "Wow."

But there's a huge BUT. Because of that underwhelming mess they made with the Vampire Lestat show, I feel like I just can't trust the showrunners with an adaptation of The Queen of the Damned. Akasha is way too layered and multifaceted. You can't force her into some cookie-cutter trope.

If they portray her as just some evil feminist out to destroy all men, I'll shoot myself in the head, rise from my grave, track down those showrunners, and destroy them myself. Because Akasha is not a feminist. Period. That's a fact.

In the book, it was written so brilliantly that, as a feminist, I sometimes found myself falling for her sweet-talking sermons. Like under a spell, I'd catch myself thinking, "Yes, girl, you're right—destroy them." But that's exactly the charm and genius of Anne Rice—leading us into delusion. Akasha actually hates women just as much as she hates men.

All she wants is worship. Let's not forget her past: she was an Egyptian queen, and in Egyptian mythology, rulers were considered literal gods. When Amel entered her, she fully believed in her own divinity. And in the 20th (or already 21st in the show ) century, she just found convenient rhetoric and beautiful sermons to lead people. But she wasn't leading them to a bright future—she was leading them to a world where she's the only god and everyone else is a slave.

She never cared about anyone but herself. She hated sisters Maaret and Mekare for not acknowledging her as a goddess, and she forced Khayman (who was a unwilling concubine just waiting for death) to rape them, then brutally disposed of them. She never turned women into vampires, not even her own daughters, because she saw them as competition. She placed herself above everyone, including Lestat. And yes, she was racist—being from ancient Egypt, she looked down on other nations and committed genocide.

At the same time, she's not just a cardboard villain. She's a very intelligent woman who ruled almost in place of her husband, she was a true queen, and most importantly, she had a childlike charm. Believing in the religion of ancient Egypt, she truly believed in her own divinity, and she didn't just want to rule the world alone. She genuinely believed that she had the right to do so because she was, in a literal sense, a god. It was described so beautifully. After reading these books, I literally ran to the Museum of Egyptian Antiquities to admire this culture.

She's so complex, so layered, so insane—a true embodiment of the Gothic novel. I love her so much for that madness. And Sheila was breathtaking in that role—in just five minutes, I saw everything I described above!

But God... after what they did to Lestat, I'm genuinely terrified to watch this. If they don't change the writing team, this season could be a total disaster.

To avoid the failure that the vampire Lestat suffered, the showrunners will have to: 1. Hire a black female screenwriter; 2. Hire a scientific consultant on ancient Egypt; 3. Take literature classes to read between the lines; 4. Listen to what Anne Rice said in an interview about the Akasha; 5. Use your brain and don't treat important topics like "ritual cannibalism" and others as garbage and madness, as was the case with Lestat's incest.

[cptnflints]

thinking about claudia’s ghost scene and how they could have really contended with claudia’s complicated relationship with louis

thinking about how when in an abusive home the child sometimes places some of their anger away from the abusive parent and places it on the other parent (not to say louis was perfect parent but he is NOT the abuser in the NOLA home)

sometimes the ‘worse’ parent almost stops being seen as a real person with agency and is just a villain, a monster.

but the other parent? the one who isn’t fundamentally a ‘bad person’ how could they just sit back and let it happen? why do they keep making their home with this person? and violence enacted by the abusive parent leads to anger towards the other parent, who is not perceived as a victim but as a passive enabler

and when the child gets older they have to reckon with the fact that the parent ‘that let it happen’ was in fact a victim and that it was never as simple as ‘letting it happen’

claudia, i feel, really wrestles with how she perceives louis in this paradigm and ultimately sees him as a victim, but that he is complicit in his victimisation by being passive and weak and her love for him is always conditioned by this

claudia directing her rage about this at louis would make perfect sense. it’s something that’s reitrerated throughout the series. she resents lestat for the abuse and she resents louis for his responses to lestat’s abuse

let her scream about that, let it be messy and complicated

but instead it chooses to have her absolve lestat of some of the worst of his abuse and say he was her favourite and that she shares his blood so they’re closer??

and to use her rage at louis’ perceived passiveness to call him a slave? for the writers to decide that claudia should conflate his passiveness with being a slave?

it’s just another complicated relationship reduced to extremes by a season that refuses to live with nuance or the natural contradictions of human emotions and especially does not allow this for any of the black characters

[bifauxnenarmand]

I don’t know if the writers intended this or they just wanted to remove lesmand from the story for their loustat endgame bs and in doing so removing one of the core parts of tvl the book, but the orientalist implications of tvl!lestat hating armand for no reason and fully blaming him for everything he himself took part in (nicki’s death, the trial) and armand being nothing to him but a sexual object (he wasnt even considered as one of his meaningful relationships but we get multiple mentions from nicki of them fucking everywhere around paris) while he simultaneously portrays him as desperate, bad in bed, and pathetic for being submissive as he sexually degrades him at every turn? how does this make lestat look like anything but a racist piece of shit? I mean more than he usually is. they could’ve explored lestat’s orientalism but having nothing that challenges it and removing any love lestat has for armand makes it so hollow

[athenadark]

welcome to the issue of casting people of colour in any kind of villainous role. Armand is a great character to play, he's devious, manipulative, cruel, broken and hurting, he is a nightmare brat who just wants to be loved = and he is played wonderfully by Assad Zaman, and it skirts the child actor problem the book suggested

but that character is then portrayed through the narrative of someone he hurt and who is a petty little bitch and cannot let that go [or anything really] and Lestat sees him as a vampire and a nightmare and someone who hurt him and stood up against him and for all of his charisma Anne Rice called him her brat prince for a reason, he is a spoiled whiny mama's boy and he holds grudges

so you can't turn the lens on to lestat's racism as it pertains to seeking out lovers of colour because lestat is completely blind to it

lestat is telling the story with his side forefront and even if he isn't lying he is not aware of all the facts, he is an unreliable narrator [all first person narratives are to an extent unreliable - or should be because the character often doesn't know something until later, or not at all, or was told it by someone else and doesn't remember it the same, or that person lied]

Lestat's racism is a point to discuss but how can you pull it into pieces to look at it properly when HE doesn't see the problem, when HE obfuscates and focusses on other details, and yeah from a fan standpoint we can see patterns that he can't, but he's telling the story.

Lestat doesn't think he's a bad person, he doesn't think he's a whiny prick with more charisma than sense, one of the reasons he attracts people is that he seems to utterly at peace with himself but he's a roiling mass of depression, self loathing and grudges

with unreliable narration the narrator cannot see where it's wrong, its up to the audience to do that, and the big easy mark here is Lestat feels wronged by Armand so the way he shows him is as a villain to be mocked and sneered at

but Assad''s performance is one of a million tiny hurts and a banked fire that is delicious. He is a monster but he thinks he was made one [not the vampire bit the rest of it] his desire for control in his own life becomes control of others and it is glorious to see

even through Lestat's Armand's the worst and I hate him gaze

[smashed-potato]

“Lestat's racism is a point to discuss but how can you pull it into pieces to look at it properly when HE doesn't see the problem”

If this is the case, why has it never been discussed in AMC meta? (Like the behind-the-scenes bits after the episode and the After Dark show?) Because they’ve spent plenty of time talking in those contexts about the discrepancy between how Lestat sees his relationship with Gabi and the horrific reality of it.

[smashed-potato]

Pretty crazy how AMC’s The Vampire Lestat managed to reheat Charli xcx’s nachos when she hadn’t even released those nachos yet.