GenderQueer & Queer in General

Here for gay shit

[lillyenn23-blog]

Everyone was insane in this episode. I could show this to someone who never watched the show before and they would be like "Okay I see your taste in fictional men is delusional" and they would be right 🙂‍↕️

Armand is like: "I shall write a honest apology to all who I have wronged🖋️" "My fledgling hates me 😿" "Lestat invites me to a concert personally after teasing me with his hotness this is going better than expected 🤩" "I am actually Carrie at the prom ❤️‍🔥💔" "I am not mid 😿" "Daniel stay away from this man he is dangerous 👿, I love you you don't need Lestat 🥺"

Meanwhile Lestat is like: "Fuck the police 🗣️' "Mom where are you????????? 👿 PLS COME BACK DON'T LEAVE ME 😭" "Fuck your geriatric sick ass Daniel 😎" "Oh the gremlin is here time to have a hot shower🩸😏🚿" "Come to my show loser it will be fun I am totally not Regina George 💅" "Hey everyoneeee this is Armand 🫵 he mercy killed my mentally ill lover for me he is also veeeeeeery MID in bed 🗣️🗣️🗣️" "Mom where are you????????? 👿 PLS COME BACK DON'T LEAVE ME 😭"

Then Daniel is going insane by flip-flopping intense emotions: "I hate you fall off a cliff 🥀 but I love you 🌹 but I hate you swallow acid🥀 but I love you🌹 pls play evil mind games with me again I miss it 🥺"

And Louis just left the land of reality completely: "Step 1: I will super casually talk to this girl 😇" "Oh fuck I have to bite this cheap burger fuck 🍔" "Okay just tell her you like her vibes as a platonic gay man don't fuck this up Louis 👏" "You remind me of my dead daughter I am also a vampire from this book 😇🥺" "Oh no she's telling me to fuck off, wait poor girl I have money I can throw at your problems pls reconsider 💸" "Okay I shall fuck off. Nevermind I'm back yaaay she accepted this is very normal and nothing bad will happen I am nailing this 😇"

(Daniel Molloy continues to be the most normal one here simply bc his opposition is so batshit)

[seasononesam]

Handmaiden? He was suspicious. I panicked.

[beemovieerotica]

[winkypants]

I would like to quote Ripley from Alien without ending up on a g*vernment watchlist now

[mossycakes]

really appreciate daniel walking into louis' apartment in san fransisco with the sole purpose of getting laid. and when he listened to louis bitch about his crazy ex for like 10 hours, and an even crazier vampire walked in and shit started to get REALLY nuts, daniel still sat there and said "by god ive made it this far i WILL get laid tonight even if its by this absolutely fucking mental guy whos lowkey been torturing me for the last few hours" he said rest in peace louis but im getting dick no matter what tonight. now THATS the indomitable human spirit

[cuntylestat]

[angrybubbles]

Still collecting my thoughts but

I love this show.

I love cycles of violence and the legacies of abuse. I love generational trauma narratives. I love that the man vs self is externalized in gothic mirrors.

I'm so sorry to everyone who is having a bad time, but I actually am eating through the bars of my enclosure.

[hollowwaveremnant]

Looking forward to more Armand analysis once the season releases cos man, he is THE character of ALL TIME for me. Cause he's my best friend, he's my pal. He's my homeboy, my rotten soldier. He's my sweet cheese, me good-time boyeh.

[crithir]

I already outlined a bit of the Dolan family history and political affiliations here, but since a video from the TVL premiere featuring James Dolan himself being blithely queried about what his favorite karaoke go-to is made its way to my feed, I figured I’d grab a few other photos/screenshots of recent events pertaining to Mr. Dolan just to highlight who and what is being criticized when we criticize AMC and how they handle their productions and marketing (hint: it’s not because anyone hates Lestat/Sam Reid! 🤡)

Here’s James Dolan on the TVL black carpet:

And here he is a handful of days later:

And here’s what he’s been up to for the last while:

I don’t know where the narrative that AMC is some poor little upstart company on a shoestring budget but is Trying Really Hard and is akshually soooooo progressive for allowing their productions to cast BIPOC at all came from, but it needs to fucking die.

[certifiedlurker]

I think what is frustrating with the whole "pimp" thing is that Louis is never allowed to be more than one thing in this fandom. He is not allowed to be dynamic, even when he is one of the vampires who is often excited and curious about the ever changing world around him; think about how he took up photography and was excited to dip his fingers into the new age art that was springing up in Paris ( and how Santiago mocked him for that at the table). Like Louis is a businessman, of course he would be excited by new things- he is good at picking out lucrative markets and turning it into profits. You want to have a discussion on themes of exploitation, capitalism and how this show over the seasons may have tried to make a commentary on it? Sure, you are welcome to it, but why is it that it is Louis who is always cast in the light of the exploiter? There's no one else to be talked about? This season came into being with the book as its backdrop- am I to believe there's no intelligent discussion to be had about exploitation at the hands of those who have considerable sway in the field of mass media? We live in a world where companies like Amazon are veering into media production, where micro trends dominate social media, influencers peddle fast fashion, and celebrities tout starvation as chic-> (grown women are to look like children), and journalists seem to be constantly pushing the goalpost on what constitutes as a genocide. So you live in this kind of world and watch a show where a hodgepodge of a book based on a lynching is central to the conflict-whose vampiric author, is riding the high of commercial success and has now gotten a new opportunity to further cash in on the craze, and the most intelligent thought you all can come up with "is Louis pimping out Lestat by owning 45% of his merch?". In fact forget even that, you all don't even see Lestat being petty by having both Daniel and Fareed in his entourage! You all aren't even mad at the Talamasca!

Louis is never allowed to trace and retrace his steps at his own leisure. Everything has to be to the T, Louis can't falter because faltering would mean lying, would mean malevolence. It's crazy how it always ends up being a version of "was it raining Louis?" Because if Louis can't even remember if he tracked in mud that evening, then how can he ever be believed when he says exactly how he had his bones broken by his husband? Cause let's be real that's what all this is about. Louis is never allowed to be more than one thing, he is never allowed to change his mind, cause that would mean he was lying. He can't ever revoke his consent- to do so would be cruel and unfair. Basically you all will never allow Louis to leave that church, you all will never allow him to leave that confessional box- he is to forever be the pimp and confess his sins; back then to a pastor and now apparently to Lestat, his so called "unknowning whore".

[atomic--queer]

watching the new episode of the vampire lestat like

[sapphire-ivy]

the thought that went into this look for her 💕

[helen-norvilles-female-rage]

Katya spitting facts

[angrybubbles]

One thing I beg people to consider as we watch more of season 3 is:

Gothic Horror's purpose in storytelling is to make you paranoid. It's goal in making the audience feel what it wants you to feel, is to feel just paranoid enough you don't stop looking for answers. Something feels wrong? Note that. Something seems inconsistent? Note that. Someone seems like they are hiding something? NOTE THAT. It wouldn't be horror if you weren't feeling keyed up about it.

This would be a bad show if you weren't encouraged to ask questions. It's up to you as the audience member, however, to decide whether you're asking them in good faith or because you think you're being held at gunpoint. The show isn't over, we aren't even half-way through, that paranoia is only going to build.

To people who are not having fun, it's okay to walk away. It's okay to decide you're done for now. Unreliable narrators will do that to you, I have a whole post about it, and sometimes it's better to let your paranoia cool off if it's causing you real distress. I've personally done it before, and probably will again.

If you are tense, the writers are doing their job. Just check to see if you're tense because the writing got you there naturally, or if you're riding so hard on them doing it "right" you're going to explode if they do it "wrong."

[sailor-v]

the vampire lestat episode 1

[professional-rat-eater]

There’s a certain subset of the fandom who really don’t like when you use the A word (abuse) to discuss Anne Rice’s characters.

But they are abusive. Abuse is pretty much an entry level requirement for the gothic genre. It’s all about exploring taboo subjects but not necessarily imposing judgement on them and that’s precisely what she did. It doesn’t mean she’s a bad person. It doesn’t mean you’re a bad person if you like her characters. I actually wish passive exploration of abuse was more common than it is because it is fascinating.

In Anne’s work, there is constant abuse, and that is what it is. That is the word we’ve coined for dynamics like the ones she writes about. She just writes about them as if she were a passive observer, which is where half the appeal of the books comes from imo. It’s far more interesting to read about how characters respond to toxic dynamics rather than for author to hold your hand and tell you they’re bad. Labelling it abuse isn’t passing judgment on the books or the characters. It’s just a clearer word for what’s going on.

We know Armand is being abused by Marius because his emotional outbursts (amongst other examples) are the most obvious kinds you’d witness in a real child being abused as he was.

We know Gabrielle is abusing Lestat (neglect is abuse) because Lestat desperately fawns over her whenever she’s around to try and prevent her from leaving again. We also know because Anne had a real issue with how neglectful Gabi was and said so directly.

The characters give real life responses that abused people exhibit and the story only benefits from this. Anne’s vampires are so heightened yet they’re still so terribly human which is why they’re so powerful. She doesn’t need to tell you it’s bad because it’s horror. That’s sort of a given.

And there are obviously a thousand other examples. You can pick any character and analyse their actions and intentions and you’ll find abuse. Louis and Claudia is in an underrated example. That’s what the series is about. Ironically, the readers who insist this isn’t the case could probably benefit from Anne being a little more direct in her framing of it, but I don’t think she needed to be necessarily. I actually love when a book or other piece of media doesn’t directly call out whatever issues it’s dealing with. It’s far more elegant to explore the impact this behaviour has on the characters rather than to just say it.

Now the racism we could do without. I think we can all agree on that. When I said I had an issue with her framing, I was mostly talking about all the colonial bullshit and how it impacts certain relationships. But there is the intent of the author and then there is the execution. I thought her execution was messy at times, but I wholeheartedly accept her work for what it is. I don’t want it to be different (again, other than the aforementioned colonial bullshit) and I don’t even think many of us disagree on the core ideals of the series. We’re just using different terminology. You don’t have to call it abuse, but it’s also not incorrect to do so.

[professional-rat-eater]

It’s not even that people think Louis is a liar that’s a problem. We know Louis lied about certain things.

It’s the fact that they think he’s a malicious liar. That they are so eager to call him a liar. It’s the glee with which they say it. The entire two seasons were nothing by fanfiction.

Or it’s how excited they are to degrade Armand or flatten his character or insult him. Or to insist that every lie Louis told was implanted by him and Louis is utterly helpless and by extension, less complex. Or he’s lying about being abused as a child, or about Lestat ever being attracted to him.

Or how badly they want Claudia to have made up everything bad she said about Lestat. They were so quick to assume she made everything about the train up because Lestat said she did.

It’s this desire to strip away all the complexities of the POC characters to pretend Lestat is just inherently more interesting than they are. It’s the completely different set of standards they are held to compared to him. The willingness to believe him over them. The completely different vocabulary used to analyse them. He gets grace. They do not.

A lot of the time it’s not what you’re saying but how you’re saying it and the fact that you’re only saying it about certain people. That’s what makes it racist.

[littlestsnicket]

i feel like the show made it very very obvious how much armand had lost control of the coven. and while i personally believe he could have murdered them all easily, that obviously does not serve him when his primary goal is to not be alone. and he walked in on louis sitting in a puddle of his own blood because he did something armand begged him not to do. so choosing louis is also a huge risk. this doesn’t mean armand wants either louis or claudia dead.

armand’s self assessment is cowardice and it is correct.

armand is a classic femme fatale character. he spends most of the season telling louis he can’t or won’t protect him from the coven, and then he doesn’t.

directing the play shows how committed he is to putting his own ptsd riddled need for security over louis’ well being (which is tragic because he does loves louis), not that he orchestrated the whole thing. not that he wanted it to happen. given how much this show is about racism, it is wild to me how much people want to minimize santiago’s jealousy of louis as the inciting action for all of this.