#will drake

[zanephillips]

Finn Wittrock and Cheyenne Jackson in American Horror Story 5x05 “Mommy“

[walnutsxblacklicorice]

okay meta and headcanon time because i can't sleep

ramona refers multiple times to how fast and easily elizabeth moves on from her partners and doesn't love them ("she doesn't love him" "of course she doesn't, you think that's gonna matter?"; "you think you're her one and only. she's already moved on to the next one, you can count on it").

however, while the moment in time hotel is set in (october/november 2015) certainly makes her look that way with donovan, tristan, and will drake (we love a promiscuous bisexual), her actual relationship history that ramona is aware of does not point into that direction at all.

the relations elizabeth has had that we know of are as follows

1925-1926: valentino & natacha

she was in love with valentino and willed herself to love natacha too even though both of them treated her badly but that's another story

1926: married james patrick march for wealth

it is not clear whether ramona knew about this marriage or elizabeth's arrangement with him bc she didn't seem to recognize him at all when she saw him in 2015

1926-1976: we know nothing about this part of elizabeth's life

1977-1992: ramona

a loving relationship that slowly turned bad due to outside influences that caused grief and pain (according to my theory) and ended in ramona cheating and elizabeth killing her boyfriend

1994-2015: donovan

a relationship that worked mostly as a void-filler for elizabeth and was sexually non-monogamous but seemed to have rules surrounding love, similar to tristan

october-november 2015: tristan

they "dated" for less than a month tbh looking at the timeline before tristan fell in love with liz instead (and died)

also october-november 2015: will drake

again, elizabeth courts and weds him for wealth and ownership of the hotel

so to summarize, since elizabeth broke up with ramona we know of one 21-year-long relationship she had with donovan and then 2 men she started dating in 2015 for money and looks. when ramona kidnapped donovan, she was not aware that elizabeth wasn't with donovan anymore, meaning at that point she didn't know about any of elizabeth's boyfriends outside of that 21-year-long relationship.

so the question remains, where did she get the idea that elizabeth jumping from one partner to the next without having feelings for any of them is a well-known pattern?

(aside from her painting a negative image of elizabeth in her head to facilitate revenge)

that's where my headcanon comes in:

in the two years between breaking up with ramona and claiming donovan for herself, i assume elizabeth was promiscuous and did jump from one partner to the next with no strings attached to cope with the heartbreak of losing ramona.

and given they had just freshly broken up, ramona probably heard about it. i could even imagine elizabeth trying to numb her pain so fast with another person that when ramona came to the hotel to pick up her stuff, she caught elizabeth in bed with another woman (or other person) and that hurt her even more and left a bitter taste in her mouth (you know in addition to her killing her boyfriend) to the point where ramona assumed if elizabeth was moving on that quickly she must've not really loved her at all (which very obviously isn't true but ramona seemed convinced of that in her unreliable retelling of the story).

that's when ramona went to her parent's place to cope with her pain and got stuck in time until 2015.

i'm still curious how she found donovan tho. maybe she hired a private eye like elizabeth did with valentino but it must've not been a very good one if he didn't tell her about tristan and will drake.

so yeah, that's my explanation for why ramona said/thought those things

[canonqueercharacters]

The canon queer character of the day is:

Will Drake from American Horror Story: Hotel, who is bisexual.

[langdoncult]

will drake & john henry are so underrated..

[witchofthemidlands]

The Why Caleb Covington Is Not The Worst Post for @thedragonemperess

[paradisesweetheart]

I would sacrifice myself just to stay here

[mask131]

AHS look-back: Checking In

The first episode of season 5... ah, so many memories. 

WARNING! SPOILERS AHEAD! DO NOT READ IF YOU HAVEN’T SEEN THE SEASON!

I’ll take notes along as I rewatch the episode.

# As a warning, I will be acting in both a very loving and very harsh way towards this season because the “horror hotel” subgenre is one of my favorites. The Shining is one of my favorite horror movies of all times, and so I had very high hopes for Hotel. On one side it did feed my “horror hotel” desires beyond my wildest dreams ; on the other it also caused me some bitter disappointments. So be warned. 

# Should I mention it? The inside for the Hotel Cortez is absolutely beautiful. The entire Hotel is a beautiful set that deserves great praise, and the Shining visual references are subtle and discreet enough to pass very well. I’ll probably go full fanboy mode when it comes to analyzing the behind-the-scenes video detailling the creation of the hotel itself.

# The whole opening sequence and arrival of the two Swedish tourists was a perfect opening for me. It resonated with some personal things I experienced at creepy hotels, it presented perfectly the horrors of the Cortez (disturbing but mysterious), the comparison to a tomb and the feeling of loneliness and isolation in this gigantic maze. 

# The loud sex noises seem quite disturbing here - and it is honestly very funny when later it turns out to just be porn movies being made. 

# The first apparition of Mrs. Evers highlights one of the key points that made this season good at first, then not so good. “Terrible accident room 51, just ghastly”. We never know exactly what happened, or when it happened, but we know it happened and we saw the blood. It is a nice way to introduce disturbing but mysterious elements - we don’t need a full explanation of what happened in every room, but little hints and clues of the hidden horrors sparkled here and there are wonderful. Of course later it turns against the season as things that deserve to be more developped and explored are put aside and reduced to “one scene wonders” as TV Tropes calls them.

# It is too bad we don’t see more of the other vampire children playing in the hotel hallways, since clearly the Cortez is part of their playing ground. Once Holden is introduced, he basically takes all of the vampiric children’s screen time. 

# Here is something that quite intrigued me. We see here the hand of the Countes, approaching the woman’s head with disturbing sounds and effects... Yet when she turns around, the hand is gone and no one can be seen. This strongly implies that the Countess has some sort of supernatural ability because even with simply enhanced speed she couldn’t be gone THAT fast. Yet we later discover that she is simply afflicted with a virus, and nothing more. But in general, this episode (and most of the early episodes of the season) play a bit too much the card of the “supernatural vampire”, which makes it more jarring when the subject is treated as some sort of sickness. 

# I LOVE the use of the old urban legend of the “corpse in the mattress” here. A very nice way of adapting modern American folklore. And yes, while some people apparently still doubt it to this day, the “mattress man” has been confirmed to be just a poor human, a former victim of Sally’s ghostly drug deals. It is quite interesting to note that the musical cue when the last thread is cut implies that the stitching of Sally is supernatural in some form, trapping her victims more than physically in the mattresses. But I may also be over-reading what was just a style effect.

# The idea that bad things happen at 2:25 in the morning was dropped from the second half of the season, wasn’t it? It was used in the first episodes but then forgotten from what I can recall. Is there an explanation given for this hour? Was it James March’s hour of death or something like that? 

# Okay, to be honest, I am a BIG fan of Se7en and to be honest the start of the “Ten Commandments Killer” storyline pleased me quite a lot. I liked for example the inventiness and weirdness of the “cheating murder”, and the opposition between the dark and old Cortez VS the bright and modern hotel of the murder. Though to be honest, John Lowe analysis of the murder scene is a bit too hasty and perfect (though when you realize what they were hinting at, it becomes painfully obvious what they went for).

# I admit that the Addiction Demon’s sodomization of the junky feels of bad taste, but outside of that you have to admit the Demon’s design is absolutely great (look at this face and body, these special effects are beautiful) and the entire concept of the Addiction Demon is marvelous. Too bad he was only truly present in this episode, and then made only sporadic apparitions of a few seconds, without more importance, explanation or depth to its character. Honestly, if they wanted to build a season with for theme “addiction” they should have given this creature more screentime, importance and action. Or maybe they planned to but it turned out the special effects were too costy? I honestly don’t know if they deleted this demon out of practicality or stupidity.

[Though, to be fair, junkies and drug addiction is a crass and dirty business that often involves and implies a lot of vulgarity and sexuality, so it can maybe still fit the thematic here?]

# The fact the clock starts turning insanely as the junkie is getting tortured by the Addiction Demon is yet another hint that time is important and that the Demon is fundamentaly tied to the evil of the hotel. Another great hint that was mostly abandonned. 

# I just noticed that the name “Liz Taylor” is one of the number foreshadowing and references to the old Hollywood and the cinematic legends of Los Angeles. 

# It is quite strange they presented Liz Taylor as this sort of greedy, money-obsessed person in this episode, but then utterly forgot about it in her later characterization.

# Looking back at the Countess’ introduction scene, and the amount of nudity and sexuality in it, the rape of the junky by the Addiction Demon doesn’t seem of such bad taste anymore - not that this scene is of worst taste, no, but when you realize that they wanted to do such a sexual and dirty season, a season of semen and blood like a Stephen King novel, it somehow all makes sense. Unfortunately they couldn’t even keep themselves tied to this idea, since the other plots of the story derivated far away from this crude, crass and carnal concepts to rather deal with stuff like family and children. If you want to do a perverse carnality, you should go for it (especially for vampires, whose morbid lust has been known for centuries now), but in the great mix and match of tones and topics this idea gets quite lost, especially since the vampiric part of the season involves a lot of children. (As usual you can see I am getting ahead of myself and commenting the entire season in one episode). 

# Another thing that deeply frustrated me. In this episode, we see enormous parts of the hotel we never get to visit again. The ballroom and the “dungeon” for example, that would be wonderful to explore - especially since the dungeon’s neons clearly link it to the Countess penthouse and put it as part of the “vampiric zones” of the hotel (much more modern than the rest of the building). Sally recalls of an “old dude” putting up “puppet shows” - and we never learn more of it. While the “accident in room 51″ didn’t need more explanation, this actually does. If we never learn who was this man or what he did, this whole mention seems quite pointless... 

# It is so funny to see the “Swedish meatballs” recoil in fear and disgusting at the ingredients Iris brings them... when they are all usual food for us Frenchies. I know Americans are grossed out by a lot of French food, but still... But overall I like the whole “evil mother” concept for Iris here, even as she “tortures” the tourists she does so in a very motherly way.

# Once again the Countess appears out of nowhere - much too fast for something not-supernatural (it is especially jarring since while we see the vampires move fast later, it is never as fast as that). 

# I also do enjoy this second murder, the twin ones. (I share Murphy’s obsession with twins, so of course it was a treat for me, plus the reasoning behind it fits with the “respect your parents” concept). Even though, again, some stuff feel quite contrived - like the police officer being distracted by something (that we never know the nature of) just so Scarlett could go out of the car. 

# Another thing I truly enjoy is the visual opposition between the world of the Hotel and everything outside of it in general. In the hotel everything is small, dark, cramped, dirty ; while everything outside is bright, clean, big and vast. 

# It is my personal opinion, but I believe that Alex should have stayed a secondary character to John’s story instead of a main character rivaling with John in terms of plotline. It would have made the Lowe storyline much more focused, and spared us this idiotic vampire children subplot.

# The same way this episode opens the season with a Murder House cameo (Marcy) it also closes with another Murder House cameo (Billie Dean). I do quite like that they decided to make Hotel an unofficial sequel to Murder House given the similar settings and influences (both were Shining influenced).

# The fact Lachlan sees the Addiction Demon is never brought up again. The Addiction Demon appears to addicts, and given Lachlan doesn’t have any relationships to addiction... was it a cheap jumpscares? Or maybe children are simply more atune to the supernatural, after all Scarlett also sees ghosts manifesting so... Maybe it is a children thing? I wished they at least explored that or brought more evidence instead of letting us theorize like that.

# “I’ve never even met the owner?” What? Iris doesn’t know the Countess is the owner? Or maybe she was just lying, but then why?

# I totally forgot Will Drake was on a cleanse... An addiction nod. Maybe it would have given him more character if it had been explored, and maybe it is why Lachlan saw the Demon... maybe it was a potential plotline they wanted to explore but did not... There is so many potential hinted at but never explored, it is so frustrating.

# One of the biggest flaws of Lachlan’s character is that he literaly doesn’t tell anybody about the weird and creepy things he sees - except to other children. And he treats all that as if it was perfectly normal. Given his character, actions and lines (like “My dad says I’m not supposed to talk to strangers” I can’t help but wonder if the part was supposedly written with an actor much younger in mind). 

# I am sorry but I cannot believe that such a big hotel could survive with such little staff. I mean we see before that the hotel had more employees, but then it all suddenly switches to just Liz, then Liz and Iris. Even with the ghostly help of Mrs. Evers, it is still a bit unrealistic there isn’t more employees (even if the hotel is old, dirty and dark, it still regularly functions for junkies, occasional tourists and porn professionals. I’m not saying a big crew, but maybe just more than two?).