iwtvdramacd18 - Tumblr blog

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mark my words they're going to be like louis takes a more physically dominant role with armand equality <3 girl does the megalodon ever make you feel so safe by letting you hand feed it. and it purrs too and flops over on its back for more megalodon belly rubs and youre like omg my sweet megalodon :') bc it wants you to be the big spoon. But Then the megalodon controls every aspect of your life including your diet and sleep schedule and clothing bc under that onion layer there is another onion layer where you are their beautiful little specimen novitiate catboy which you are of course aware of as a result of the mental and sexual st andrews cross that you are willingly strapped onto in your shared mind palace which coincidentally has bars around it, to protect YOU of course. from the outside world. which you believe :) though at the same time as with all your men you hold the secret trump card which is just straight up leaving, their greatest fear that they have both gone to absolutely fucking insane lengths to prevent, using opposite tactics. mark my words the point is that lestat and armand use opposite tactics to get the same result (louis pussy until the heat death of the universe). mark my words that they are inventing a type of bdsm that is heretofore unseen and illegal in the eyes of interpol

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I WANT THIS.... TO REMEMBER

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Closeups and some process stuff under the cut

this went through quite a few stages and is made of multiple parts originally intended to be individual pieces. Originally Daniel was going to be the popup but I decided I liked Claudia there a lot more (her text in the text box is "the blood is bad here" flipped and repeated)

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Emmy magazine Carol Cutshall interview

“It was such a drastic change going into season two,” says Cutshall of the drama, returning May 12 to AMC and AMC+. “We went from the height of glamour, which we last saw during a Mardi Gras party, to the polar opposite in the premiere. When you look at Louis and Claudia in their shearling coats in Romania and the amount of mud and blood on them, those looks are built for surviving and searching and starting over.”

But glamour returns to their lives as the pair forge ahead in Paris. In short order, they are welcomed into a theatrical coven of thespians operating out of the Théâtre des Vampires. Seduced by their habit of living loudly and proudly — at least at night — Louis relaxes into his post-Lestat life, taking up photography and exploring his sexuality in subtle ways.

“The look I landed on for him was that of artists and café society, and French workwear with a little bit of a blue-collar look,” Cutshall says. “It’s not the finery that we are used to for Louis, but his fastidiousness in how he wears it — tucked and belted — is still there.”

There is a visual hierarchy among these old-world vampires. Louis wears the costume of the common man, placing him below the coven’s creative director, Armand (Assad Zaman), the so-called love of his life who was unmasked as an ancient vampire in season one. When they meet, Armand is dressed in warm colors and loosely draped outfits with open collars, fearlessly baring the neck — a vulnerable point for humans and vampires alike.

“We want to break away from the disguise he had in season one, because he is the mega predator,” Cutshall says. “He’s not threatened by anyone. So, in everything he does and wears, he can be like an animal who is not afraid to lie on their back and bare their belly.”

Claudia, meanwhile, sees kindred spirits in the coven’s distinctive personalities. She has grown intellectually beyond her eternally teenage shell and now uses vibrant clothes — like the dress she wears for their first theater outing — to grasp at an intangible womanhood. That signature dress and cape were scripted as lavender and white, but Cutshall dyed the fabric an orchid color and added a gray crosshatched cape that glows onscreen; the ensemble stands out against the make-do fashion of a post-war world.

“For Claudia to have this pristine dress made for her, and because she is seeing who she is for the first time, she needs to be the freshest flower there,” Cutshall says.

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ldpdl, ethnicity, and the false monolith of blackness

there's this false tendency to think amc louis being made black is pandering, or a means of removing louis from his oh-so-detailed /sarcasm/ background in the books. i also find that people tend to not even understand what show louis's ethnic background is, despite rolin jones the showrunner and even the fictional louis both coalescing around this multigenerational explanation of the gens de couleur in new orleans, and how jim crow disempowered them.

I came around to his ethnicity a sort of interesting way which is through Lestat. [ … ] I was like lets give him a legitimate a third attempt at figuring how to be with somebody for the rest of his life and how to not repeat your mistakes. [ … ] I started from there so it had to be someone with some money cause he had to be with his own folks and I thought he wanted someone who could fight back and who could be a challenge and would force him to restrain himself. And nobody at AMC was interested in 7 seasons of the regretful plantation owner, so we made Louis come from a lineage that did have a plantation and did own slaves.

rolin jones in the s1 post-finale episode of the podcast names how he came to this understanding of louis's character. lestat, after failing to make a bride of his mother, and a concubine of nicki, was seeking for someone of a similar background, or the most approximate equivalent. he would not have been interested in louis if louis was an anglophone baptist black man descended from upper-south arrivals into new orleans, nor would he have been interested in louis if louis was a poor black creole honestly s1 does not give a good reading of claudia's ethnic bg in new orleans, but since she cannot understand french, we can presume shes either a poor creole removed from her cultural background with her vampiric adoption narrative in mind, or was also of an anglophone baptist black background like claudia was. louis coming from this fallen sort of gentry, the free gens de couleur, similar to that of the tvl lestat who came from this barren aristocracy dating back to the crusades, was key to lestat's long-term goals with louis.

Capital accrued from plantations of sugar and the blood of men who looked like my great grandfather but did not have his standing. But then decades of Jim Crow and the electrified light of a new century had vanquished any idea of a free man of color. - AMC IWTV 1x01

louis was of the first generations of the gens de couleur to be born, raised into, and face the institutional and personal ramifications of being viewed as black in america. this fuels much of the character's rage as he moves through storyville, trying to continue the similar modality of exploitation to the contrary of pretty baby with brooke shields, majority of the brothel circuit was statistically black girls + women being sexually pawned off to white men but ultimately failing to do so bc of the anglophone white american class that now rules over him. [tom anderson, alderman fenwick, finn o’shea starting out as louis’s subordinate then ending w/ him entering whiteness by having a sporting house throwing torches at louis’s brothel in s1e3]

By 1850, the free population of color, beset by the hostility of white supremacy, was economically diminished and residentially segregated. The Americanization of Louisiana, and in particular New Orleans, was completed before the state became the sixth to secede from the Union in 1861 in the struggle over the perpetuation of slavery. [link] The Democratic redeemers who came to power in 1877 lost no time in redefining the Negro's "place" in Louisiana life. They immediately restored the color line in the New Orleans public schools and offered silent support to de facto segregation practices in places of public accommodation. With the assistance of two landmark decisions by the United States Supreme Court, the redeemers soon dismantled the egalitarian legal apparatus put together piece by piece under the Radicals. Finally in 1890 they began to write their "final solution" into Louisiana law with a series of "separate but equal" statutes. Soon New Orleans Negroes were again segregated in virtually every public pursuit. [link]

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Top 5 iwtv relationships (both platonic and romantic)!

Since this is a mix I'm not sure you can really put them in proper order:

-Armand/Louis

-Louis & Claudia

-Just the du Lacs in general as a family dynamic, there's something so engaging and heartbreaking between the siblings (and then ofc you add Claudia to the mix as she transitions from Louis' daughter to his younger sister, everything that entails wrt her want for agency and self-description, and the other uglier side of what it means to be a younger sibling to Louis I expect we're gonna see this season, thinking about the times we've seen him snap at Paul and Grace-- obv he loves his siblings deeply however he's far from a perfect older brother and Claudia's line from the trailer "you're stronger, harder too"; Yani has spoken a bunch about Claudia and the effects of being someone in a less appreciated relationship role-- younger sister and daughter)

-Lestat/Louis (this feels weird to put since this is just like. ok its the story I like the story. as opposed to stuff like loumand I more actively make stuff about idk)

-The completely fabricated mixed black Nicki I made to make reading TVL easier for myself/ Armand

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top five comics ❤️

NO ORDER!! Also just going with western comics here:

X-Statix

Grant Morrison's run of Animal Man

American Vampire (THIS IS NOT A GOOD COMIC!!!! But it heavily impacted my art style back in high school and helped me think about what I dislike seeing in vampire fiction lmao)

Daredevil End of Days

Ok so truth be told I got distracted writing this by Shin Ultraman and if I had a fifth pick I've totally forgotten it.... that being said I have been meaning to reread Watchmen specifically so I can rewatch the HBO show along with it because I don't remember much of the show itself but I remember having a TON of mixed feelings about it, but at the time I was watching it I didn't have the comic on hand. So I'm wondering how that holds up (also fun fact Steven G Norfleet is in it tho I think only briefly)

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Top five TV shows? Top ten fictional characters? :)

TV SHOWS:

Interview with the Vampire

Revolutionary Girl Utena

the other three are more fluid in terms of standing:

3. Mob Psycho 100 (I haven't finished this yet. I've been putting it off)

4. NBC Hannibal (THIS IS NOT A GOOD SHOW BTW)

5. Mr. Robot

10 FAV CHARACTERS (no order and super incomplete)

Louis de Pointe du Lac (amc iwtv)

Claudia nolastname (amc iwtv)

Utena Tenjou (Revolutionary Girl Utena)

Anthy Himemiya (Revolutionary Girl Utena)

Phosphophyllite (Houseki no Kuni)

Godzilla

Killy (BLAME!)

Cibo (BLAME!)

Joylne Kujo (Jojo's Bizarre Adventure)

Miles Morales (Spider-Man)

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TOP FIVE BOSS FIGHTS !!!!

OK LETS FUCKING GO the only one in order is gonna be number 1 btw:

5. Steven; Pokemon Sapphire/ Ruby

I was super into Pokemon as a kid and Sapphire, while not the first Pokemon game I played-- that technically was Crystal but my younger bro wanted to play that so I had to switch-- was the first Pokemon game I beat. I was so fucking thrilled when I beat him late at night I had tears streaming down my face and everything

4. 10th Colossus; Shadow of the Colossus

So in terms of scope and atmosphere like every colossus is like top tier but there's something so exciting about this one swimming after you under the sand and you see those huge fucking eyes glowing at you while you're frantically trying to shoot them out without hitting a wall/ it crushing you with its jaws

3. Rom; Bloodborne

so this one is kind of a cheat bc I actually fucking HATE this boss battle in terms of how it plays mostly bc I hate mob bosses that being said. The first time I beat her we actually killed each other at the same time and my heart was beating like crazy and I screamed bc I had no clue if it counted or not BUT IT DID and bc of that she gave me one of the best boss fight experiences of my life.....

2. Barthandelus; FFXIII

This is mostly for the spectacle of the fight I just really like his design and the OST and there's one attack he does where he like opens up his whole face and just launches a bunch of lasers at you and I think that's the coolest fucking shit

Xemnas; KH2

This is the most fun I've had doing a boss fight ever I literally had a save on my PS2 dedicated to just being before the final Xemnas boss rush and would play it constantly. I even like the parts that objectively suck about it I DONT CAREEEEE its so hype this was one of my fav games when I was younger and that final boss was like the icing on the cake all the forms he has..... dude is attacking you by hurling buildings at you I love it. The whole like tiers of grandiosity and then the final final you just fighting him with the transient clone stuff he has going on ANYWAY. This is my legit fav boss battle

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ASK ME MY “TOP 5/TOP 10” ANYTHING!

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locked together in hatred

vampterview does such a smart job of taking pretty much every narrative strand and theme that the source material handled poorly or straight up dropped and reworking them with newfound nuance and depth, and i think a topic from the first book that has been very well adapted is incest. 

i actually would argue that the show and the books both allow the same interpretation, that is, that the family as it’s been designed to function in patriarchal society not only allows for, but fosters abusive and incestuous dynamics. as perfectly put in this post about revolutionary girl utena:

incest is merely a symptom of the problem which is the patriarchal family itself. rape and domestic abuse are merely symptoms of the problem which is patriarchal & heteronormative romance and society itself.

(watch revolutionary girl utena!)

the issue is, of course, that the chronicles and rice’s work as a whole hinge on a constant eroticization of abuse and sexual violence, and ultimately fail to present any meaningful critique of these structures and instead reproduce a discourse in which incest and pedophilia are erotic and desirable, and victims of abuse and rape are either at fault for the violence they are subject to, or not actually being abused at all. 

from these topics, the tv adaptation most transparently recovers the themes of domestic violence and rape, and handles them much more thoughtfully than the source material, but this doesn’t mean that it’s afraid to make the audience sit in discomfort. the most obvious example is that, while —according to writer hannah moscovitch— showing claudia’s assault was never even considered, the show takes us through a very carefully shot, but no less harrowing scene of domestic violence that lasts several minutes. 

there are other instances in which the show demonstrates how well it can toe this line: the framing of louis and lestat’s second sex scene in episode six is visually erotic, while the narration surrounding it invites the audience to question if a numb, dissociated louis can give any meaningful consent —and claudia’s comparison of lestat to her rapist is used to drive the point home by literally overlaying his face with the sex scene. 

at the same time, the “floating sex” that in the pilot was so clearly romantic has been recontextualized by lestat flying during the domestic violence of last episode, making it almost impossible for viewers to miss that, even in this most intimate moment, louis can never forget the very real threat that will now always hang over his head. 

another thing this scene does is, of course, suggest an incestuous subtext, by having claudia “present” while louis and lestat have sex. a co-presence that will only be reinforced in the next episode: exerting violent authority as the family patriarch, lestat will force claudia to move back into the marital bedroom, where we’ll see her separated only by a screen from louis and lestat’s intimacy. 

traditionally, though luckily falling out of fashion, fathers take their sons —and sometimes uncles their nephews!— to their first sexual encounter when they come of age, officially initiating them into heteropatriarchal life in the pseudo-incestuous ritual of buying sex together, sometimes even with the same woman. i don’t believe it’s a stretch to read lestat taking claudia to lover’s lane as a callback to this, which could in turn invite us to think about the different place in the family structure a daughter occupies as opposed to a son.

obviously, the show doesn’t say this unhealthy blurring of boundaries is the same thing as actual incest, and at least one instance of actual incestuous/pedophilic abuse is introduced to make the distinction (“perverts? like the uncle at the roomin' house who used to watch me pee?”), but even the characters themselves make the point explicit. 

perhaps most obviously, in episode five, with no prospect of emancipation from the confines of an inescapable nuclear family, claudia demands: “which one of y’all is gonna fuck me?!” 

but, where the novel has claudia go from lestat and louis’s daughter to louis’s “lover” or “paramour,” the show instead reworks this shift by having her go from being louis’s daughter to being her sister. 

it’s clear that there will never be any such relationship between the show’s claudia and louis: the most blatant reason is that louis is not attracted to women on any level, of course, but his reaction of shocked disgust to claudia’s outburst serves to further reinforce that point. 

in the book, it’s in claudia’s transition from daughter to something of a wife that rice’s pedophilia apologia first rears its head, and further mentions of claudia through the sequels will, in typical ricean fashion, frame her as a seductress set out to steal louis from lestat. 

needless to say that the show gives no reason for the audience to actually interpret claudia’s feelings for louis as romantic either, but the way in which she’s framed in relation to louis and lestat’s relationship places her in a mirroring position to antoinette. the parallel is made most explicit in episode 6, when daniel’s “but there were three of you” accompanies the transition between antoinette and claudia —but, where antoinette is outside looking in on louis and lestat, claudia is trapped inside with them.  

i talked about it at length in this ask about the affair, but the one who makes this subtext most transparent is lestat himself, and i don’t think it’s a stretch to characterize his jealousy of claudia as having a sexual undertone —not a conscious one, necessarily, but it’s evident that sex, power and ownership are very much wrapped up all together in lestat’s mind. 

lestat is, after all, the one who says, “unlike claudia, i am a full-blooded adult… with all the right appendages,” and it would be hard to miss the implication in his derisive “if he’ll have you, sister,” when claudia interrupts their kiss in the finale. sure, he knows that there are no romantic or sexual feelings between louis and claudia, which doesn’t preclude him boasting that his bond to louis, his ownership of louis, his power over louis, is stronger, more important, deeper, because he can satisfy louis sexually where claudia can’t. 

it’s also worth noting, i think, how these comments both sexualize claudia —painting her, much like rice did in the book, as trying to “seduce” louis to steal him away from lestat— and desexualize her, twisting the knife in the wound of her eternal adolescence. 

that sarcastic “sister” also drives home lestat’s disdain for their new family arrangement. claudia might be louis’s sister, louis might be her brother, but no reorganization of the family unit can make lestat into their equal. 

in episode five, louis referred to them as “weird brothers,” and the earlier “uncle les” also makes us think of another way in which heteropatriarchal society forces people into strange pseudo-incestuous situations: in places where same sex relationships are highly stigmatized, it’s not uncommon to find same sex couples passing as siblings or cousins, or to find one parent in a same-sex couple calling themselves uncle or aunt. 

not unrelated, a common situation you find in places with no same sex marriage or civil union legislation: in many recorded cases, one partner will legally adopt the other as their adult child in order to ensure their inheritance. 

though, of course, louis’s relationship with lestat is as much reminiscent of these same sex arrangements as it is of a traditional heterosexual marriage in the edwardian era, which is hinted at through his parallels to grace and her own marriage, and made most explicit when the show has louis, while recovering from injuries that resulted from domestic violence, reading an essay on (heterosexual) marriage by edward carpenter —who was, it’s worth mentioning, a gay man. 

the blurred line between being a daughter and being a wife, especially in a context in which both were legal conditions in which ownership of the woman passed from the father to the husband, fades in turn into the just as dubious line between lover and fledgling. in the finale, louis makes explicit what lestat’s “now i’m your cousin, now i’m your aunt… i am your maker,” implied in episode six: talking to daniel about their plot to kill lestat he asks, “could the children murder the father?”

all in all, it’s clear to me the show is interested in incest as a theme —but, unlike the source material, this adaptation seeks to problematize it, interrogating the familiar structures that enable it, and inviting the audience to sit with our discomfort, rather than assuage it by erasing the incest narrative entirely.

there’s every chance that this subtextual thread will continue to be woven into the second season, and i’m looking forward to seeing how louis and claudia deal with being newly orphaned siblings, and how madeleine will come to upset their little family of two. 

we have yet to see how the show will address lestat’s relationship with his mother if and when it adapts the following books, and i don’t discount the possibility that they would be more willing to depict an explicitly incestuous relationship when it’s between two adults. i certainly don’t think it’s off the table, but the writing of the first season gives me hope that they might address that storyline much more smartly than rice could even have thought to try. 

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this was already making my video editor crash and i don't have the skill to realize my vision anyway so here's under a minute of a likely to remain unfinished hurt x ldpdl amv

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strength

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super rough but wanted to make sure i got this out this week !!!

inspired by that cap from the 1994 film ofc (under cut)

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night out (ref and alt below)

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10k words in my drafts about how much claudialestatmotherdaughter sharpobjectsisms annoy me sobad that really never need to see the light of day bc like it’s pretty self explanatory but . ohh it’s so insulting

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There is more pragmatism to Lily’s willing involvement in Louis and Lestat’s burgeoning romance than she is often credited with. While Lily appears to be doing relatively well for herself as a black sex worker in this time and place, she would have been quite aware that her position at The Fairplay Saloon is contingent on her youth and beauty, as well as the whims of her white managers. Louis is a regular client of hers and, judging by the warmth of her greeting to him in her introductory scene, someone Lily has genuine fondness for. There is clearly a tentative trust between them as the same performance that Louis uses to conceal his lack of interest in women would invariably expose it to Lily. Nevertheless, Lily endangers that relationship and a source of her livelihood when she shares that information with Lestat, something she unapologetically admits to Louis (“I told Mr. Lioncourt you and me usually just talk.”). The boldness she displays in doing this suggests that she is not only certain that Lestat will not use this knowledge against Louis, but that she has recognised an opportunity in enabling the pair to finally act upon their sexual tension. 

In a world where Lestat and Louis were and remained human men, any affair between them would require discretion and plausible deniability. A good way of concealing it would be for one or both of them to publicly set Lily up as a kept woman; a mildly scandalous association that would leave all those who need to believe the act feeling appropriately smug, shocked, and, critically, none the wiser. Lily could continue to perform this role even if Louis and Lestat’s romance came to an end, thereby providing cover for any subsequent relationships, and an answer to any curiosity about why an eligible bachelor would remain unmarried. It is a life that would provide her with stability, comfort, and a future. While Lily does seem to care about Louis as a person and is accepting of his and Lestat’s homosexuality, it does a disservice to the character and the writing to reduce her motivations to that of allyship.

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Family portraits, circa 1920 and 1938