#interview observations

[harmoonix]

Scorpio/Capricorn/Sagittarius/Leo/Pisces/Gemini vibes

[elegy-for-the-present]

Max and George offering various unhinged solutions for making the Monaco GP more exciting, this year just as enthusiastically as last year.

[xxhellonursexx]

Interviewer: Assad, I was wondering what it was like for you, siring one Daniel Molloy?

Assad: (fingering microphone) We didn't shoot it, but me and Eric decided to play the scene anyway…hot and steamy with room to get hotter and steamier. (snaps clown suspenders) Just kidding, no we didn't. Or did we? I forgot your question…? Haha (pulls on clown wig, honks clown nose)

A Different Interviewer: So, what's on your "Armand" Spotify playlist?

Assad: How could you even think to ask me for such intimate details. I am mortified. Is there anything sacred anymore in this uncivilized ass-crack of a nation.

[ladyofspoons]

of course you have a blue kanohi and pronouns

[hallucinatinghalos]

interesting that Armand fell for Lestat the actor, Louis the photographer, and Daniel the budding journalist. He loves those that explore the rocky terrain of humanity. The outsiders looking in.

[loveridden1999]

[vampire-in-the-corner]

this is how Armand fans sound to me when they justify his actions in Paris because of his trauma

[classiccvnt]

One of my favorite things about Lestat is that no matter his mood, he will act defiant. Even when complying. The verbal agreement you'll get will be said with insult attached. Even when in deep mourning. The vulnerability will be shown with a snarky remark.

This makes his rare acts of complete earnest all the more satisfying.

[rodrickheffeley]

armand calling gabrielle and nicki silent ones in tvl bec lestat couldn’t hear their thoughts // claudia calling lestat dumb one in iwtv 1x04 bec he couldn’t hear hers and louis’ thoughts

[hyohaehyuk]

Sam Reid and Jacob Anderson about *Dreamstat* (Interview with the Vampire Season 2 ❤️🩸 Behind The Scenes)

Note: i dont know what is the original source (maybe is a content from amc+ u need to pay to watch) but i found a similar video on amc official channel.

Sam saying that it was Jacob that came up with name "Dreamstat" (what surprise ofc it was him) and Jacob mentioning about Sam was mirroring his/Louis' body language when he was playing Dreamstat.

[skarsjoy]

Alexander Skarsgård on his new role as a shy android, his tech bro character in Succession, why he adores Nicole Kidman, and drinking pints in Leeds.

Read the full interview with Michael Hogan on our website.

📸 Photograph by Erik Tanner/Contour/Getty Images (2023 at Tribeca Film Festival)

via obsmagazine on Instagram (5.17.25)

[licncourt]

Louis & Magnus parallels

To elaborate on the Louis and Magnus stuff: Louis has very obvious comparisons with Nicki and I think that's the emotionally easy comparison for Lestat to make, but I would argue that Louis, despite being my most special boy, is really more like Magnus than like Nicki in some very key ways, far beyond being black-haired and pale and creepy. The one that sticks out to me most is how his darkness manifests externally. Nicki said very hurtful things to Lestat during their last meeting, things that affected him deeply and maybe permanently, but Nicki's pain was incredibly internalized. He kept it very close to the chest as a human, to the point where Lestat was wholly unprepared for what he would see during the turning and for what would happen to their relationship.

This is a pretty stark contrast to Louis who only internalizes these things until he very much doesn't, the first example we see being his attack on the priest that comes to his bedside early in the book. It's minor in the context of a vampire story filled with violence, but it's SO important to note that Louis is 100% a human in this scene and Louis says himself that he almost killed that man. What he does is crazy, like straight jacket behavior, he literally chases the priest outside and beats his head against a brick wall until he's almost dead. It’s brutal and intimate and disturbing. There's a reason killers who beat or strangle victims are considered more dangerous than those who used something hands-off like a gun. To kill someone with your own hands like that, you have to really want to hurt them and you have to want it for a long time, it's not a quick death.

I feel like I can't really overstate the gravity of that event in the context of regular human life. And like I mentioned in another post, Louis' mother immediately suspects that he's responsible for his brother's death which suggests to me that this isn't the first time he's behaved this erratically or even violently. Clearly there's even more context here that we don't have, but it says so much about what kind of person Louis is and what he's always been like. There's something very scary and unhinged about him even without vampire urges to help it along. This is what he's always been. His obsession with one blonde boy was only the beginning, given 500 years it could have become a dungeon full. Maybe before Magnus was Magnus, he was someone like Louis.

Magnus and Louis have a similar sense of entitlement, some deeply held belief that their violence is justified by their very existence and the existence of their wants. We see Louis fight the reality of feeding, but he never seems to regret the rest of the death that he brings when something doesn’t go his way. Not the first priest, not the painter, not any of the men he harms in his post-Paul bender, not even the second priest really. He wants to kill Armand’s human slave for the crime of perceiving his desire, he just can’t in that situation. He even attacks Daniel at the end of the interview and leaves him to die because he was an overzealous 22 year old. Louis doesn't suffer alone any more than Magnus did, someone has to pay and they'll go through as many people as necessary to reach the other side of their pain.

When I imagine the Louis that Lestat first encountered, there's nothing particularly romantic about him, not even in a tragic, consumptive beauty way. This version of Louis wasn't just a little disheveled and weeping elegantly, but actively disgusting in a lot of ways, monstrous and half dead on arrival. Greasy hair, blotchy, sallow skin, unwashed and sweating out whiskey and BO, bloated from alcohol, maybe a little jaundiced if this had been going on long enough to cause liver damage (and it probably had been in some capacity), puking and shitting himself behind a tavern, and so full of rage that it's all exploding out of him. If no one wants to lower themselves to his level, he'll find a way to make them do it.

I’m sure in that moment, Louis was like a fairytale mirror of Magnus, the same darkness but enough beauty and soul to round off the edges of Lestat’s nightmares, just enough like Nicki to make the darkness palatable through the lens of loneliness and Need and a consuming desire to fix the past and to return to it with control. It was a chance to reenact what happened to him but in the driver’s seat this time, a do-over of the past where he's no longer the victim, transforming his own horror and disgust over what his attacker did to him using Louis as a proxy. Louis' existence tames the horror of Magnus into something manageable and even romantically and sexually exciting. Lestat wants to want Magnus for his own sanity and in Louis he finally can.

It seems clear within the story that Magnus never went underground and it allowed his madness and darkness to completely overtake him. I think Louis' eventual fate would have been the same, the one dead blonde boy that a part of him did want to push down the stairs becoming a decomposing mountain of them. The process had already started with Daniel, chosen for his similarities to Lestat. I don’t think it would have ended there if Lestat had stayed buried.

[nsuyeula]

"So I knew Melissa would 'break up' with Shauna at the end of this season. That was the only thing I knew. So in my plan was with the first two scrips, or first three scrips I was told 'listen, it's gonna end by the end of the season, to a certain extent, and that, its gonna be, Melissa's gonna think Shauna's gone to far. That's basicly were I decided to play with, so I was like 'okay well how interesting that I end it, so I'm gonna go this way [gestures right] before I go that way [gestures left], and I'm gonna make her (Melissa) the craziest, down bad person ever, so then that [gestures left] matters.' So that was my plan. And So I was looking for keys in the script where I could play into that kinda arc I guess I made for myself. So with like, four and five, I was like 'you know what, trial, this is her stage. This is her stage to impress the fuck out of Shauna', so those like, 'crazy eyes', that was the plan. Cos I knew, if I was going to flip a switch, I needed to come from somewhere [gestures right].

So the clue, okay, 'when do I start to get some like -'. So there was some stuff originally written into five that were a bit vulnerable when I was handing the sheath and stuff, that were cut out, but it was kinda cool because it extends that arc a little bit more. Were she doesn't play into that 'hey can we talk about this stuff' too early. So, Seven, when I got hit with the arrow and she (Shauna) ran away - and it was scripted, I mean, if some says 'if she dies, you die' I would be like oh [mimics tucking hair behind ear and blushing].

But, evidently, she (Melissa) is pissed. And I was like, 'oh okay that's my starting point'... it's really interesting because in that conversation in eight, the conversation flips out of nowhere and Melissa is like, 'what are you going to do when you get back?' And I remember sitting there with the writer and I'm like 'okay I know you can't tell me anything, but what I'm thinking is this switch comes from - I still want this to work out at this point, but I can now see the holes in the relationship. I can see the role that Shauna's playing, I can see the game she's kind of - I see myself being a bit of a pawn here, I can see how I'm playing my part.' And it's like 'If Shauna wants to play house, I'll play house with her'.

- Jenna Burgess on planning Melissa's arc S3

[dxxtruction]

So this feels sort of obvious to me but Armand doesn’t wish to use or want any power he wants control. Specifically he wants to be in control of his sense of security, safety, stability, and attachments, his survival and identity. He controls what others are doing really only insofar as they threaten the control of any of that, cause he doesn’t really want power over them. (Except maybe Claudia, but I’d argue that is still a control thing). He will willingly forgo using or being in power for control. He manipulates and lies not for power but control. He makes grand displays of his vampire powers or strength not on the central intent of having power over people but for control. He doesn’t back down from Madeleine’s turning to have power over Louis he does it to remain in control over himself. He submits to giving up power for Louis’ power because it feels like it’s all in his control, and disobeys Louis when it’s not. He doesn’t take back power over the coven because he has more control if he does not fight it. His choice is a matter of weighing up how much control he has between the two. If the reasoned way to have control is to use power he will use it. If he doesn’t have to use power to have control, or there’s simply more control in not, he is not going to use it. Of course you will note he is simply very powerful, he has the position and means for it, and his ability to have and get so much control is a power in itself, that power is baked into having control. But he is not like Santiago, who is power hungry and wants and uses any power he can get his hands on. Or Marius who is full of himself on his power and has a sense of entitlement about it. Or even Louis who seeks and uses dominance and capital as power for a means of getting and having control. Armand is going primarily always for control as a means in itself for control, and the demand of it is a very high bar which tends to look like he wants or relishes in using power. But from all I can tell he quite hates it really, submission to power is a place of control for him, but he will use and get power if it’s the most in control means to control he has.

(This is at least as insofar as we’ve seen of him in the show. You could say Armand will have a sort of love with power but then some kind of disillusionment with it in s3, going off what I recall of tvl, that puts him back into this state of needing control being above power which would’ve also been his way of operating with Santino and Marius.)

(Added note: I should say I do believe Armand is almost always aware of his position to his power at all times, it’s not lost on him he is very powerful and can use said power if he so wanted, but it’s a question of his control if he does. He understands power and how to use it or he wouldn’t have such great ability to have and manipulate all this control. Of course he’s not perfect in this either, and I do think a strong sense of powerlessness, and total loss of control can override all his sensibility about power. Anyhow, Armand understands power extremely intimately, from all sides of it, and yet places attention not there but in having control, for the things I described above. Survival for him ranking above concerns like that.)

[spotlyts]

What if picking up trash could save the planet more than planting a tree? Curious? In this piece, we explore the surprising ways everyday actions make a lasting impact—read on to find out!

[sophaeros]

arctic monkeys for observer music monthly, july 2009 (x) [text version]