Do you like my headcanons? Wanna read my fic about the Vampire Chronicles?
Be my guest! Please leave comments, though, so I know you stopped by.
The Vampire Soap Opera - a AU series
Rats & Honey
Armand goes to therapy, unpacking his relationships over the last 500 years and firmly reentering his Slut Era.
Technically, a character study that's gotten farther out of hand than expected.
Daniel's Little Interlude
Daniel & Armand have a complex relationship, beginning with 1973 and ending with their uncertain affair. Therapy is probably helping.
Selenic in Sausalito
Those of you old enough will remember an advice column in the newspaper called Dear Abby. Beginning in 1956, Abby was no doubt an essential support for at least one discontent housewife. (Armand. It's Armand.)
All Landlord are Vampires
Is it ethical for a vampire to be a shitty landlord?
Armand is in his divorcee era. Louis can't make up his mind. Daniel and Lestat are along for the ride.
Caludia's Craft Corner
AU. Single father life doesn't suit Lestat well.
Rennaisance
AU. A bottle story where Nicki comes back from the dead and starts a Youtube channel.
a prima vista
AU. Armand has a tendency to fall in love with beautiful things and people, to the point of obsession. He and Marius discuss it now and again.
A couple scenes from something that might have once been a longer story.
Goblin Treasures and Curiosities
AU. Armand gets cursed with humanity and promptly panics.
Rotten Boy. That's all this Marius has to say of his Amadeo-- the boy who was "beloved by god", in a situation where Marius was absolutely casting himself as a god. But that fruit went sour somewhere along the way due to circumstances Marius claims time and again that he "could not prevent".
This sentiment perfectly captures how Marius feels about Armand and I have realized that do not hate Marius enough for it. Two words in episode 5 and it perfectly captures the whole dynamic. All the condescension, disrespect, and demeaning utility.
Having finished Blood & Gold last week I am still reeling from the disdain Marius shows for Armand. The show hit the nail right on the head I didn't hate Marius enough; I need to get better at my new job: Hating Marius.
My heart breaks for Armand who spent his (precious few) years in Venice mooning after Marius like the guy was some kind of god. But, nah, Armand was just the purse dog Marius bought to distract him from his midlife crisis because he's a pathetic and lonely divorcee. Once that little dog gets lost he just shrugs and goes to the breeder to get another. Doesn't even put up missing posters or check the shelter.
I am not even joking. As soon as Amadeo gets kidnapped Marius is like "welp, that's a lost cause, I guess it's time to get a new one" and turns Amadeo's best friend Bianca.
All of this is an effort to recreate Pandora, of course, and the relationship he had with her. Or to forget Pandora, more aptly. Amadeo, its implied, is nothing like Pandora, her polar opposite-- male, willful, more than a little bit unhinged and ultimately unable to effectively argue with/have equal power to Marius. But when Amadeo is kidnapped as a result of Marius's own failure to act? it's just too much fucking work to get him back because he isn't Pandora and the only person Marius cares about is Pandora. (Unless Pandora is around in which case the only person Marius cares about is himself and maybe Akasha.)
Naturally, he turns Bianca who is a beautiful young woman but obedient and quiet. Or so he claims in his narration, ignoring how Bianca is cleverer than he is and has lived her life beholden to men just like him, finding ways to outlast and outstmart them...
He then has multiple opportunities to drag Armand's ass out of his cult and spend however-long helping him get back to himself. He knows where Armand is the entire time. They've vampires. They live forever. Armand more or less worshipped Marius-- if anyone on the planet could help pull him out of the cult bullshit, Marius could've-- but, no. Nope. He won't even let Bianca go do it. You see, Armand dresses in rags and is smelly and mean, there is no hope for that little barbarian rascal, he was this vicious little savage the whole time clearly, what an oversight, what a shame, what a pity.
(The ancient Roman racism toward Europeans is so fucking strong in everything Marius says and does in this book. It's really nasty -- which, kudos to Anne Rice for damn compelling, uncomfortable writing. Kudos to the show for casting Assad Zaman because I feel like the "orientalism" flavor of condescending racism is a really relevant evil to invoke for how all the Western characters relate to Armand.)
There's a disjointed and disconnected feeling scene at the end of the book where Marius decides he wants bloody revenge on Santino and another character kills the guy for Marius-- but, does he really? What a hollow, token gesture that Armand (with no dialogue or further description than his name) is present for. Nothing in the actions or words about the previous 500 years at all indicates that Marius gives a damn about what happened to Armand, what Armand had to become to survive, the betrayal he must have felt upon finding out that Marius never, not for even a breath in the privacy of his own mind, so much as pretended to want to seek Amadeo out and save him.
My poor Armand who has been a bargaining chip his whole life, a pretty thing to own and control, a tool for forces more powerful and incomprehensible to him. Is it any wonder that he turns out the way he does?
I love how Daniel and Armand are always talking past each other in this season.
Daniel, trying to focus on being pissed off and in his feelings while Armand is explaining (poorly) the very concrete problems they're now facing because he's terrified for Daniel's life and cannot possibly put that to words.
Armand trying so hard to meet Daniel where he's at: in his feelings. Trying to explain that i do love you and love between vampires can be so different-- no, not like that, not like lestat and his mother, Daniel, for the love of heaven, i am trying to meet you in the middle, to see if we can fit into some new shape because this does not have to look like cis white-coded polite suburban upper class "fuck you i got mine" post-2016 gay marriage respectability, something rawer and queerer and real-- and Daniel only catching up with the very practical and unromantic, "oh hey you mean my powerset issues can be fixed?" of "walk in the sun again".
When the feelings get too real these assholes both intellectualize. Go for what's actionable and concrete. That's easier than shoveling the emotional fallout they're both drowning in and I am EATING IT UP.
me: [holding both of fandom's hands gently and making deeply uncomfortable eye contact]
me: you are supposed to hate lestat a little.
me: if you find Lestat annoying that is because you are supposed to
me: he is "The Brat Prince" for a reason.
me: he is supposed to infuriate everyone he speaks to on a regular basis by being crass, distracted from the point, mischievous, and generally abrasive
me: if show!Lestat annoys the fuck out of you? if you want to throttle him? if you wish he would shut the fuck up and tell the story already?
me: that means he's well-written
me: that means he's in-character
me: the correct response to Lestat is to hate him a little bit
have i talked about my "anne rice's vampires are part of a psychic hivemind and it explains all their issues" mild take on pillowfort yet?
why a hivemind?
basic rule of anne rice's vamps: the animating spirit of vampires is the alien amel. just the one iirc (correct me if i'm wrong).
the closer to the OG vampires you are, the bigger chunk of amel you have and the more fancy powers you have and the less human you appear.
what does it explain?
telepathy with limitations: Telepathy with vampires too close in lineage is imposisble.
Metacognition is when you think about thinking. A lot of therapy is metacognition in a CBT framework. It's harder to metacogitate about thoughts you're having right now, immediately, thoughts that are "close" to you.
Too close to the same fragment of Amel? congrats, no mind-reading for you, gotta find an intermediary... or just use words like a human.
loneliness and alienation are the worst things (TM) but also completely inevitable
There's a WHOLE LOT of philosophy and art about the nature of the self and interconnection of all things, the hedgehog's dilemma, and similar ideas, etc.
If you are just one being, you may be connected to all others, but you're also fundamentally alone in your own thoughts.
Sure, Amel has created a hivemind or whatever... but Amel is just one being. Separate from others of their originating species. Split between so many hundreds of bodies. Connection is only possible within the self but the self is still isolated in a really literal sense here.
Oh, the horror.
Basically all the conflict the vampires experience is down to "i do not want to be alone" which is really relatable lol
too many vampires => too much fragmentation of amel => more mental health issues for anyone who isn't accustomed to telepathic shielding
see: Akasha
see: how prone young vampires are to offing themselves
see: the apparent low-level psychic giftedness among mortals we follow who become vampires and survive it
Is anyone talking about how Armand joining AA (even as a scheme or for the bit) is cult-hopping?
Like. I’ve seen people making jokes about how lonely he is and wondering what he’s addicted to work whatever. And man. Y’all. Dudes. Comrades. He’s addicted to cults.
Per Knitting Cult Lady’s framework this is textbook cult-hopping.
His birth religion (in the books anyway) was culty as fuck, especially at the fictional “let’s inter monks alive so they can ascend to be one with god” monastery he was living in. Marius is absolutely also a cult leader with some really modern elements I don’t think Rice intended— and Amadeo was His Favorite so that definitely turned out well. Santino & the Children of Darkness are a stereotypical cartoon villain cult— which Armand was SO GOOD AT that he is appointed head of his own sect and ultimately becomes the de facto cult leader for the whole operation. He ran his theater company like a cult. When that failed he realized he didn’t want to be in charge and fell into a 1-1 cult dynamic with Louis. Now that Louis is gone… he’s looking for a new high control group because it’s all he’s ever known. He’s addicted to being in cults so what better cult to join than AA?
Does anyone else see it?
Note: I am not saying that AA and its offshoots do not help people. Or that a survivor is a bad person if AA got them sober. If a cult is what helps you stay alive, happy, and sober then more power to you as long as you’re not hurting kids, imho. I’m saying that for many AA has been exploitative and culty as fuck. Cults are GREAT at getting people sober just look at the military or evangelical religions. If cult tactics didn’t work so well there would be no cults.
or: reasons why setting boundaries is important #1283
I’ve figured out a reason why Benzaiten Steel stayed with his mother instead of doing the “sensible” thing and moving out. I think that it’s possible, too, that Juno has always been aware of the answer but, in the scope of Juno Steel and the Monster’s Reflection, he isn’t able to face it head-on because it contradicts his black/white, either/or sense of morality.
TL;DR: Despite Juno Steel’s unreliable narration we are able to see clearly the enmeshed relationship Benzaiten had with their mother Sarah and the ways in which that unhealthy family dynamic shaped Juno Steel as a person.
Juno’s perception of Ben is shallow and filtered through the limitations of human memory. We all know by now, too, that Juno’s an Unreliable Narrator™. In light of this, we need to ask ourselves why it is that Juno remembers Ben as happy, supportive, and only ever gentle in the challenges he poses to Juno. Throughout the episode, Ben’s memory is clearly acting as a comforting psychopomp: he ferries Juno through the metaphorical death of his old understanding of his mother (and also himself) and into a new way of thinking. He does this through persistent-but-kind questions, never telling Juno what to do or how to do it. This role could have been played by anyone in Juno’s life (Mick and Rita come to mind first) which makes it telling that Juno’s mind chose Ben to fill this role.
Juno’s version of Ben is cheerful, endlessly patient with Juno and Sarah, and above all he is compassionate. He acts as a mediating presence between Juno and Juno’s memory of Sarah and he doesn’t ask a whole lot for himself. If this is Juno’s strongest memory/impression of Ben’s behavior and perspective, then we can draw some conclusions about the roles they each played in the Steel family unit: Juno was antagonistic to Sarah and vice versa, and Ben was relegated to the role of mediator for the both of them.
Juno: She’s just evil.
Ben: That’s a big word.
Juno: “Evil”?
Ben: No, “Just”.
We can see in this exchange that Ben is a vehicle for the compassion Juno needs to show not only to Sarah but to himself, too, in order to move on and evolve his understanding of his childhood traumas.
This is not necessarily an appropriate role for a sibling or a child to hold in a family unit.
In family psychology, one of the maladaptive relationship patterns that is discussed is enmeshment. Googling the term you’ll find a lot of sensational results (e.g. “emotional incest syndrome”) that aren’t necessarily accurate in describing what this dysfunction looks like in the real world. This is in part because enmeshment can present many different ways. So, in order to proceed with this analysis of Benzaiten Steel’s relationship with his mom, I need to define enmeshment.
Enmeshment occurs when the normal boundaries of a parent-child relationship are dissolved and the parent becomes over-reliant on the child, requiring the child to cater to their emotional needs and to otherwise become a parent to the parent (or to themself and/or to other children in the family). This is easiest to spot when a parent confides in a child as if they’re a best friend, disclosing details of their romantic life, expecting the child to give them advice on coping with work stress, and similar. Once enmeshment occurs, any kind of emotional shift in one member of the enmeshed household will reverberate to the others; self-regulation and discernment (e.g. figuring out which emotions originate in the parent and which ones originate in the child) becomes extremely difficult for the effected child and parent. When an enmeshed child becomes an enmeshed adult they often have issues with self-identity and interpersonal boundaries. For example, they may struggle to define themselves without external validation and expect others to be able to intuitively divine their emotions. After all, the enmeshed adult could do this with their parent and others easily due to hypervigilance cultivated by their parent and they may not understand that such was not the typical childhood experience. These adults are often individuals to whom the advice “don’t set yourself on fire to keep someone else warm” is often relevant and disregarded. They may perceive their own needs as superfluous to others’-- and resent others as a consequence.
Another layer of complication is added when the parent in an enmeshed relationship is an addict, as Sarah Steel was. The enmeshed child often times becomes the physical caregiver to their parent as well and must cope with all the baggage loving an addict brings: the emotional rollercoaster of the parent trying to get clean or the reality of their neglecting or stealing from their child to support their habit or their simply being emotionally absent. Enmeshment leaves children with a lot of conflicting messages about their role in the family, how to conduct relationships, and how to define themself.
We only get an outside perspective on this enmeshment in the Steel family. It’s clear in the text that Juno’s relationship with his mother was fraught. He jokes in The Case of the Murderous Mask that she didn’t kill him but “not for lack of trying”, implying that Ben’s murder wasn’t the first time Sarah Steel lashed out at Juno-- or thought she was lashing out at Juno but hurt Ben instead. During the entire tenure Juno’s trek through the underworld of his own trauma, Juno asks the specter of Benzaiten over and over, “Why did you stay?”. This is a question that Juno himself can’t answer because Ben, when he was alive, probably never gave him an answer that Juno found satisfactory. There are a few possibilities, which I can guess from experience, as to what the answer was:
Ben may never have been able to articulate that his relationship with their mother left him feeling responsible for her wellbeing.
Or, if he ever told Juno that, Juno may have simply brushed off this concern. After all, as far as Juno was concerned, Sarah was only ever just evil. To protect himself from his mother’s neglect and codependence, Juno shut down his own ability to perspective-take and think about the nuances that might inform a person’s addiction, mental illness, abusive behavior, etc.
It is likely that Ben thought either his mother needed him to survive or, alternatively, that he couldn’t survive without her-- as if often the case with children who are enmeshed with their primary caregiver. It was natural and necessary for him, from this perspective, to stay. Enmeshment is a very real psychological trap.
It is often frustrating and hard as hell to love someone who is in an enmeshed relationship because, from the outside, the damage being done to them seems obvious. See: Juno’s assertion that Sarah was just evil. Juno is, even 19 years later, still angry about Sarah Steel and her failures as a parent and as a person. His thinking on this subject is very black-and-white. He positions Sarah as a Bad Guy in his discussions with Ben-the-psychopomp and the childhood cartoon slogan of “The Good Guys Always Win!” is repeated ad nauseum throughout Juno’s underworld journey. This mode of thinking serves two purposes:
First, it illustrates the role Juno played in the household: he was opposed to Sarah in all things and Sarah did not require any compassion or enmeshment from Juno. Juno was, quite possibly, neglected in favor of Ben which would create a deep resentment… toward both Sarah and toward Ben. This family dynamic would reinforce Juno’s shallow moral reasoning and leave him with vague, unachievable ideals to strive for like “Be One of the Good Guys” or “Don’t Be Like Mom” -- ideals that he can’t reach because he is a flawed human being and not a cartoon character, creating a feedback loop of resentment toward his mother and guilt about resenting Benzaiten. That guilt would further bolster Juno’s shallow memory of Ben as being infallibly patient, kind, loving, etc.
Second, Juno’s black/white moral reasoning is an in-text expression of the meaning behind Juno’s name. When “Rex Glass” points out that Juno is a goddess associated with protection, Juno immediately has a witty, bitter rejoinder ready about Juno-the-goddess killing her children. Juno was named for a deity who in some ways strongly resembles Sara Steel and he resents that he is literally being identified as his own mother. Juno-the-goddess has one hell of a temper, being the parallel to Rome’s Hera. Juno is not a goddess (detective) who forgives easily when she (he) knows that a child (Benzaiten Steel) has been harmed. This dichotomy of “venerated protector” versus “vengeful punisher” causes psychological tension for Juno that is only partially resolved in The Monster’s Reflection. The tension is not fully resolved, however, because Juno never gets a clear answer for the question, “Why did you stay?”
The answer is there but it is one that Juno doesn’t like and so can’t articulate: Ben is enmeshed with Sarah who named him, of all things, Benzaiten and that is why he stayed. We’ve already seen that names have intentional significance in the text. Benzaiten is hypothesized to be a syncretic deity between Hinduism and Buddhism, is a goddess primarily associated with water. Syncretic deities are fusions of similar deities from different religions/cultures; their existence is the result of compromise and perspective-taking and acceptance. Water, too, is forgiving in this way: it takes the shape of whatever container you pour it into... not unlike a child who is responsible for the emotional wellbeing of their entire family unit. Not unlike Benzaiten Steel.
Ben stayed with his mother because his relationship with his mother was enmeshed, leaving him little choice but to stay, and this ultimately led to tragedy. Sarah Steel’s failures as a parent are many and Juno still has a lot of baggage to unpack in that regard, especially where Ben is concerned. It’s unlikely that we’ll get the same kind of “speedrunning therapy” episode again but I know that The Penumbra is committed to a certain amount of psychological realism in its character arcs so I am confident in asserting that Juno Steel isn’t finished. Recovery is a journey and he’s only taken the first steps.
i say “let’s talk” which is a posting convention on tumblr which implies some kind of conversation is going to be happening but, really, i just want to get my thoughts down. my thoughts are probably going to read as needlessly hostile, because that’s how i roll.
i like the magnus archives. eldritch horror is my jam, okay. even better, the main character of the magnus archives, is asexual and, y’all, i live for canon ace characters. so, given the fact that i’m a fan of a piece of media in this day and age i naturally seek out fanfic... and in my journeys i’ve noticed something unpleasant about magnus archives fanfic: vast swathes of the fandom seem to be under the impression that “the right person” can make an ace want to have sex. this is doubly true in fics that want to tackle kinky subjects-- as if kink is in some way inherently sexual, which it decidedly is not.
i’m not saying that demisexuality doesn’t exist or that i don’t like demis. don’t get it twisted.
what i’m saying is that when the only portrayal of asexuality in media, fan-created or otherwise, is “if someone does the right things the right way this asexual will have sex with them”, it starts to feel more like some weird take on a virginity fetish than an empathetic depiction of asexuality. or else a new spin on the “straight dude is convinced he’s the one true dick who can turn the lesbian straight” scenario so many of us have lived through. it’s compulsory heterosexuality turned sideways. it’s cruel and coercive to perpetuate that kind of narrative. it’s pervasive in mainstream media and downright nauseating to see in supposedly queer-friendly fandom spaces and i’m very, very tired.
anyway, stay tuned for when i inevitably write tma fic that gets exactly no traffic because i refuse to pander to horny randos online who want to fetishize asexuality.
